David Rausch: The Story Behind GO! Curriculum
What does it look like when God calls you to something that terrifies you? David Rausch, founder of GO! Curriculum and author of Feeding Faith, shares the story behind his leap from kids ministry director to curriculum creator.
Jeremy and David dig into what makes curriculum actually work: developmental appropriateness, the E.A.T. framework, and why GO!'s chronological scope and sequence was built around the rhythms of the calendar year.
If you've ever used GO! Curriculum, wondered how curriculum gets made, or needed a reminder that God often calls the wrong person on purpose, this one's for you.
Quick Links:
Feeding Faith by David Rausch
Transcript:
Jeremy O'Neill (00:00)
Well, David, welcome to the podcast.
David Rausch (00:01)
Yeah, thank you for having me, Jeremy.
Jeremy O'Neill (00:02)
All right, so I am really grateful to have you on. One of the things that I was sharing with you before we even pressed record is I discovered you years ago because of a resource that you created called the Two Minute Trainer. This was a tool. I love the way you framed it. The whole idea was that you had these bite-sized pieces of trainings that you could weave into all kinds of stuff. You could weave it into your weekly team huddle. You could put it in your weekly volunteer email, whatever. But the idea was
you're gonna take actual practical volunteer training and insert it into your regular rhythms of how you lead your team. And that for me was probably one of most helpful things that I've discovered in ministry. I still use it to this day. And since then, I've seen so many amazing things you've created, like Go curriculum and this book that you just came out with, Feeding Faith, which I would recommend to anybody listening to this. Bottom line is,
I love what you do for the kids ministry community and I'm thankful to have you on. But where I'd like to actually start the conversation is maybe the early days. I know you spent some time at Willow Creek back in the day. Tell me about what you did there and how it kind of influenced your thoughts on kids ministry.
David Rausch (01:17)
Yeah, well, first of all, let me go back to what you were saying about the two minute trainers. I'm glad to hear that somebody was using it and great found great value in it because it's one of those resources. put it I put it out there for free. We don't even sell it. You know, so when you sell something, you can actually see, you know, I sold I sold X number of copies of this and people give you feedback. This is just one of those things I put out into the universe there and had no idea.
Jeremy O'Neill (01:30)
Certainly.
David Rausch (01:45)
whether or not people were actually getting it, using it, or finding any value in it. to ⁓ hear that at least one person ⁓ found that resource and thought that it was helpful is amazing. Which by the way, it's still out there if anybody wants to go looking for the two minute trainers. We've got one for small group leaders and then there's a whole different two minute trainer ⁓ for large group leaders. yeah, lots of great free training content out there. But you're asking about Promise Land, Willow Creek, yeah.
Jeremy O'Neill (02:08)
amazing.
David Rausch (02:15)
Going back into my early days of ministry, I'll be honest. I had no desire to be in children's ministry Which is strange because if I go all the way back to sort of the very beginning when I was in college I I knew that God was leading me into ⁓ Being in ministry, but I I had no idea what that meant or specifically what kind of ministry I would be doing ⁓ I also knew that I really loved working with kids
But the idea of being in kids' ministry had no appeal to me as a college-age guy because my uninformed perception of children's ministry was that it was just, it was old ladies with felt boards and sock puppets. And that just is not cool. That's not cool to a guy in college. So yeah, I just didn't wanna do that at all. So graduated from college, ⁓
Jeremy O'Neill (03:00)
Alright.
David Rausch (03:12)
was an intern at Willow Creek with their college ministry. And so while I was there, I thought, you know, I've had experience working with kids. I would love to be connected with them in some form or fashion. So I signed up to be a volunteer with Promise Land, just to have that interaction with kids. I, everything that I thought was children's ministry was completely proven wrong.
when I was at Promise Land. I mean, this is back in the late 90s, in the heyday of Promise Land when they were doing their conferences and their publishing curriculum. They had an incredible team of talented people and I got to learn from the best and it was incredible. And so over the course of being a, I was a small group leader for four and five year olds for seven years.
Jeremy O'Neill (03:42)
Hmm.
Hmm.
David Rausch (04:07)
got to learn children's ministry that way. ⁓ And then I went on staff for two years. I was a K-1 teacher and then a fourth and fifth grade teacher and then ultimately the elementary program director. ⁓ And so that it was through Promise Land that I fell in love with children's ministry and really learned what it was and how to do it in the best way possible. ⁓ But I'm originally from St. Louis. And so after having three kids,
Jeremy O'Neill (04:35)
Hmm.
David Rausch (04:37)
that call to come home and be close to family was getting louder and louder. ⁓ Actually, the literal phone call from my mom to come live in St. Louis was getting louder and louder. ⁓ So I ended up taking a position as a children's ministry director of a multi-site church in St. Louis and did that for five or six years. And all of the years were fantastic until that last year.
Jeremy O'Neill (04:47)
Ha
David Rausch (05:07)
And that last year I was just miserable, you know? So much so that I was looking to get out in any way that I could. I had even thought about like, well, maybe I'll just go work at the Home Depot as a cashier for a little while until I figure out what's my next step. What do I wanna do with my life? And so one evening I was sitting in my office at church and I just said the simplest, shortest prayer. I said, okay, God, what's next?
And ⁓ I've never had God answer me as loudly or as quickly as he did that night. ⁓ It was the same day, later that evening, I was at home, I was painting the bathroom. And I'm careful to say I was painting the bathroom, because I've told this story before, and said I was painting in the bathroom. And it just seems like I was in the tub doing a watercolor. Right, right.
Jeremy O'Neill (06:02)
Yep, weird mental picture. Yep, you're painting the bathroom.
We get it.
David Rausch (06:06)
Yes,
no, was painting the walls in the bathroom and it's quiet. There was no music playing, no conversation or anything like that. You know, just thinking. And all of sudden, I hear God say to me, plain as day, start your own curriculum company. And I wrestled like in that moment and well beyond that moment with the question of like, wait a second, is this really God's voice that you're hearing or is this just my own internal voice?
And all I can tell people is that ⁓ I've been a Christian for a long time. I'm still learning what God's voice sounds like in my life. But I know what my own internal voice sounds like, because that thing is running all the time. And ⁓ it says small things and safe things and comfort preserving things. And it doesn't really speak with any authority. It just sort of like suggests stuff. And all I can say is that this was not my voice. This voice spoke with authority.
And it was saying big things and bold things and scary things. In fact, it was so scary in the moment. ⁓ I couldn't have put the word on it at the time, but I was having a mini panic attack. ⁓ Like it literally, it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I was having a hard time breathing just at the thought of doing this. And so I just told myself like, look, David, go to bed, cause it was late at night.
And I thought like so many other harebrained ideas I've had, this thing will just be gone in the morning. And so I woke up the next morning and was the first thing I thought of and instantly elephant back on the chest. And so I pushed it away again. And then it was back the next morning and the next morning and the next morning. And I kept pushing it away until after about a month, it was still there. And I thought, well, this just isn't working. It it go away. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pray.
Jeremy O'Neill (07:44)
Hahaha
David Rausch (08:03)
and I'm gonna wrestle with God. And I'm just gonna tell him honestly what my reaction to this is. And so I prayed and I said, God, you have got the wrong guy. Like honestly, ⁓ the curriculum development side of things, like, okay, I can see where I could do that. Like I have a background in that, you know, I'm a creative person, ⁓ but we're talking about starting and building and leading an organization that does that.
Jeremy O'Neill (08:14)
Hmm.
David Rausch (08:32)
And I don't know the first thing about business or about being an entrepreneur. The whole thing sounds terrifying to me. And so I told God, look, you know, wrong guy. And what I heard God say back to me is, David, I know you're the wrong guy. And that's why I picked you. Because at the end of the day, this isn't about what you are going to do. This is about what I'm going to do. And I'm just asking you to be faithful.
Jeremy O'Neill (08:56)
Hmm.
David Rausch (09:03)
and to be a part of this. And so I felt instantly like, ⁓ this is my burning bush moment. This is like, you know, Moses being asked to go talk to ⁓ Pharaoh. ⁓ And so long story short, at that point, I kind of said, okay, God, I'll think about it. And I did, I thought about it and I talked to a handful
Jeremy O'Neill (09:22)
Hmm.
David Rausch (09:32)
of people that I really trusted, their wisdom and their opinions. ⁓ And everyone was saying the same thing. You've got to follow this voice. You have to do this. ⁓ In fact, about a month later or two months later, ⁓ a close friend of ours who was one of my confidants said, not only do I think you should do this, but my wife and I would like to be a part of it. ⁓ They gave us the startup money to start the whole thing.
Jeremy O'Neill (09:57)
Hmm.
David Rausch (10:00)
and he has a business background. And so he said, I'm gonna coach you in doing this. And at that point, I just run out of excuses between sort of being miserable where I was and feeling so called by God to do this. I was out of excuses. So ⁓ kind of took that leap of faith, walked away from my full-time salary and just said, okay, we have about enough money.
for this thing to survive for three months. And I'm just gonna trust that more money will be there in three months from now. ⁓ And true to his word, God has been faithful every step of the way. That doesn't mean it was easy. And that doesn't mean that it was not scary. It was terrifying the whole way still now. It is still scary. ⁓ Even though we have, you know, we're up and running, we're doing so well. And it's still scary. ⁓
Jeremy O'Neill (10:47)
Yeah.
David Rausch (10:58)
But that was the start of, that was the start of Go curriculum.
Jeremy O'Neill (11:01)
if you don't mind me asking, this might be a little bit personal, but you mentioned that your last year of ministry before you launched Go, the word you used was miserable. If you're willing to share, why was it miserable?
David Rausch (11:11)
Yes. Yeah.
my goodness. There was, ⁓ there was a lot of internal restructuring. The church was growing ⁓ and I had just sort of been put out to pasture is the best way that I can say it. I had all of these abilities and interests and desires and I had been sort of just put over in a, in a corner where
I didn't feel valued at all, which I know is a common thing with children's pastors. I didn't feel challenged at all. If there was ever a time in my life where I felt underworked, it was during this year. And I have been both overworked and underworked, and I'll take overworked any day of the year. I mean, both are terrible, but when I was...
Jeremy O'Neill (12:09)
Sure.
David Rausch (12:10)
underutilized and underworked. I just, I struggled. I mean, I felt like I had no value there. ⁓ Every week, I mean, 40 hours felt like 120 hours, you know, as opposed to times where I've worked 60, 80 hours and it felt like 20 hours, you know? ⁓ It's so hard just sitting around and feeling like you're twiddling your thumbs. ⁓ So yeah.
Jeremy O'Neill (12:26)
Yeah.
David Rausch (12:40)
⁓ On top of that, I didn't feel like I had the trust of my leadership. ⁓ In fact, I had started, really my dream was to be able to write curriculum and I would have written it for them. That would have been ideal for me because I would have felt like there's no risk in that, ⁓ but I still get to utilize my talents. I would have done it for them, but there just wasn't the trust there. ⁓
So the only way that I would have been able to do that was to walk away and to do it for myself. So yeah, it was a tough year.
Jeremy O'Neill (13:15)
Wow, I imagine man. it's funny, cause you're talking about this and I feel like I've experienced the same thing. There was one ministry area I was at. I don't even really want to give too much in terms of timeline for people to, I don't want to put any church on blast, but I remember probably the time I was most miserable in ministry was the time I felt underworked. And I know that might sound so weird to some people listening, but there was something about it that made me so deeply uncomfortable.
David Rausch (13:29)
Yes. Same.
Jeremy O'Neill (13:45)
And it was confusing because I would have thought all these times where I'm like burning the candle at both ends and I'm hustling and sprinting all the time. You would think that that would be the hard part or that you, you know, that maybe you feel taken advantage of or overworked, whatever.
David Rausch (13:52)
Yes!
Yeah, you would think that the dream job is,
yeah, you'd think the dream job is like, ⁓ somebody is paying me to sit around and do virtually nothing. Like there is probably, if you listed that job ⁓ online, you'd have a line a mile long of people looking to get that job. So you'd think like, why wouldn't you want that? But then you get it you're like, my gosh, somebody just like put me out of my misery here. I'm so bored.
Jeremy O'Neill (14:14)
Ha ha ha.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was hard for me and I can hear, you know, the way you're describing it, that you were feeling a lot of the same things. I know that had to be a huge shift though. And by the way, one thing I think is important to mention, sometimes the Lord does this as a way of preparing you for the next thing, you know, where, listen, a few things that could have been different at that moment.
and your entire story could look entirely different. You could have spent all your time creating something just for your church, which still could have been good, but what happened instead is you created something that's building many churches. You're building the kingdom of God, not just one church.
David Rausch (14:56)
Yeah.
Jeremy, yeah,
I've said this before, even as I look back, I truly believe that God had a hand in my misery because had I not been so unhappy and so desperate to do something different, I don't know what I would have said if God had called me to do this.
I really think I would have found any excuse to be like, no, I got something really good here. ⁓ You know, and I've said this too before, like, I think God only speaks as loudly as he has to. And if that's a whisper, then that's a whisper. And if it's a shout, it's a shout. For me, it was an all out headlock. Like, I just, he had to create this.
this situation where I was absolutely miserable where I was and really shout loudly, this is what you're supposed to do now in order to get me to do it. Because like I said, it was so far outside of my comfort zone. I just would have never imagined that this would be something that I was doing.
Jeremy O'Neill (16:12)
Where do you go to better hear the voice of God? Like I know that you specifically for anybody who follows you, I know you're an outdoorsy person. You like to hike and travel. Is that part of it for you is being able to really center on hearing the voice of the Lord and remove distractions? I'm curious, like when you want to lean in and listen, what does it look like for you?
David Rausch (16:22)
Yes. Yeah.
goodness. Yeah.
Yeah, well, I do hike on a regular basis, even just day to day on small trails around my house. But yeah, I am very big in the outdoors. I love doing long distance hiking. In fact, I just came back a couple of weeks ago. I got off of the Arizona Trail, which the Arizona Trail goes 800 miles from the border of Mexico to the border of Utah.
Jeremy O'Neill (17:02)
Wow.
David Rausch (17:02)
I
did about 460 miles of that. ⁓ So I was out in the wilderness for, it was a solid month that I was just completely unplugged. And when I say in the wilderness, I mean, like I'm backpacking the entire time. ⁓ Maybe every four to five days I'll get to a small town where I can resupply. Usually maybe spend one night in a hotel, get a shower because you can't even imagine.
Jeremy O'Neill (17:28)
Yeah.
David Rausch (17:30)
how dirty and smelly you get after five days in the wilderness. But yeah, I'm telling you, there is something that happens when you unplug for that long. ⁓ When you remove all distractions, you get away from work, you get away from just the daily grind, and you're quiet. And...
It's amazing. I've said this before and I'll keep this brief because honestly, I could do an entire podcast series just on this. So you've got me off on a passion tangent of mine. So I'll really try to keep this brief. But there's this process that you go through when you do a long distance hike like this and you really disconnect from all of media and all the screens are gone and all that stuff that I was talking about for the first couple of days.
Your mind is still really cluttered with all of the noise from the world. You're still thinking about your job and you're thinking about these relational things and news and current events and all that stuff. It's just kind of going through your head two or three days. You finally work through all those thoughts and you finally get to a level of thinking that in your normal life you just don't have time for, or there's just too much noise to think about those things.
And so you go a layer deeper and for the next week you think about those things. But then after a week of that, you kind of work through that stuff and you get to like this even deeper, quieter place where you're really starting to think deeply about your life, your soul, about things of God, about scripture.
you're able to hear in a way that you can't hear when you're in the midst of all the noise. And so even as I was doing that, I'm thinking back, even in scripture, know, Jesus, he went out into the wilderness for 40 days, 10 days longer than I did. And I can totally understand why he would do that. And I can experience what happens for, whether it's Jesus or David would do this.
What happens when you actually get away from all of that and you quiet down for an extended period of time? Now, I know I'm talking about something that 99 % of the people listening to this can't just go away for a month, you know, and aren't just gonna go out in the wilderness and sit there quietly. ⁓ You know, but there are little ways that everybody can disconnect and find places of solitude, whether it's a little bit on a daily basis or once year.
to even do some sort of like a personal retreat where you kind of get out and you get away from technology and turn that phone off and the screens off and just have some quiet. ⁓ It is amazing what happens when you take the time to do that.
Jeremy O'Neill (20:32)
Yeah, that's incredible. I would love to have a deeper conversation about that at some point, because I feel like you're scratching the surface of a much bigger conversation. But I'd love to hear a little bit about the early days. And I know we'll talk about your book, we'll talk about Go and all that stuff. But like I told you before we hit record, I like to know how things started. You know, I don't just want to know the framework in your book. I want to know what you were thinking as you wrote it, you know. And so in the same way,
David Rausch (20:55)
Yes.
Jeremy O'Neill (21:01)
when you decide to take this jump, it's clear that the Lord is saying, I want you to build this curriculum. How much of what we know about Go curriculum and the framework and the strategy and the structure was already figured out to that point? And how much of it did you start from scratch? Like, I wonder how far along did you have your thoughts in place by the time you committed to doing it?
David Rausch (21:25)
Yeah, when I wrote the book, the framework had already been developed. I mean, was when I started writing it, was basically just ⁓ putting the flesh on the bones that were already there, because this is something that I've been thinking about for ⁓ 10 plus years during the development of the curriculum. And it goes way back to even when I said yes to starting the curriculum. The first thing I started with is like, OK, so what philosophy is this built on?
Jeremy O'Neill (21:39)
Hmm.
David Rausch (21:54)
⁓ What's the scope and sequence going to look like? know, those are the bones of a curriculum. If you're developing a curriculum, you can't just start slapping words on paper. You've got to do some pre-work to even get to that point. And so ⁓ there was actually, there was a book that I read that was really instrumental in helping me form the discipleship strategy that we built Indigo curriculum. And really, honestly, it shows up in the book, Feeding Faith as well. There's a book called
Jeremy O'Neill (21:55)
Mm-hmm.
David Rausch (22:24)
⁓ I think it's called Four Perspectives. And that's actually a series ⁓ because they had four perspectives. There was one for youth ministry and I'm making some of these up. One for worship ministry and one for senior pastor ministry and just all, you know, ⁓ any sort of corner of ministry where there might be some different perspectives or different approaches to doing it. So it was called Four Perspectives. And ⁓ in the book,
⁓ Three of the perspectives were, ⁓ one was more of a cognitive approach to children's ministry. So you're talking about the educational approach. ⁓ One was more pragmatic, ⁓ which is more of the application oriented approach to children's ministry. ⁓ And one was more of like a spiritual transformation approach to it. And then there was a fourth one.
that was really an odd fit for the book, but I think because the series was called Four Perspectives, they felt like they needed a fourth one. And so they had this, it was a whole chapter on like a media driven approach ⁓ to doing children's ministry, which was still helpful, but didn't really counterbalance the other three. So anyhow, I read that book and it was, I mean, highlighted so much of it, it was so informative. And really the takeaway from the book was,
Jeremy O'Neill (23:32)
Hmm, sure.
David Rausch (23:47)
You know, here are three people talking about three different approaches as if they were ⁓ opposite sides of some sort of spectrum from each other. Like, almost like you had to choose one over the other two. And at the end of the book, I thought all three of these perspectives are absolutely essential and relevant to children's ministry. I want for my curriculum to have all of them in there.
And really, even though I couldn't have articulated it in this way, you know, 10, 12 years ago, that was the beginning of the EAT strategy, which is built into the curriculum. So EAT, standing for E-A-T, education, application, and transformation. That's what I say are the three ingredients to a well-balanced spiritual diet. You take out any one of those three,
and suddenly the whole thing becomes a little bit off balanced. You're missing something. ⁓ And so with Go curriculum, I was like, no, I want all three of those things in there ⁓ in equal measures with each other.
Jeremy O'Neill (24:55)
how did you articulate that within your content in the early days before you had fleshed out this idea of EATS, the acronym? Like how did it show up in practical ways before you landed on that?
David Rausch (25:07)
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I didn't articulate it well at all. And that was one of the learning things. Like, honestly, let's go back 10, 12 years when I started this whole thing. I wasn't just being modest when I told God, you've got the wrong guy. I really did not know what I was doing. And it showed in so many ways, especially when I look back in terms of the messaging and all that stuff.
Jeremy O'Neill (25:13)
Hahaha.
David Rausch (25:37)
⁓ I really, I think the most important thing that we could have been pointing out in the early days was the eat strategy. ⁓ But the strategy that we took, which I also don't think was a bad direction, certainly for the time, ⁓ it was sort of how we were positioning ourselves was that some curriculum is really fun, but it lacks biblical depth. And other curriculum is really biblically sound, but is very dry and boring. And ⁓
I wanna do something that has the best of both of those things because fun and engaging and biblical depth are not mutually exclusive. There's no reason that those two things cannot coexist in the same curriculum. And so that's how we had positioned ourselves in the early days was like, hey, we are gonna create something, it is gonna be wonderfully fun for kids and it's gonna be unapologetically, biblically rich. We're gonna put that together. And we totally did that.
We still point that out with the curriculum, but it wasn't until about a year or two ago that I said, you know what? I think that there's something ⁓ way deeper and even more profound than that that I think sets us apart from other curriculum. And that was the EAT Strategy. And so in past year or two, it took me 10 years to finally go, ⁓ wait, I think this is a miss. know, we should have been...
kind of describing ourselves this way all along. And so we've been doing that messaging a lot more in the recent days. And part of that is the Feeding Faith book ⁓ that I wrote.
Jeremy O'Neill (27:13)
Yeah. And I will say just to, to acknowledge some of those things. think those two pillars that you mentioned about go about having biblical depth, but also having to be engaging and interactive. That is, mean, that's how I've thought about go from the beginning. And I don't know if it's necessarily because of your messaging or just because it actually accomplishes those things. But that I think is the hallmark of what you've built. I describe go when people ask me about it.
David Rausch (27:40)
Yeah.
Jeremy O'Neill (27:42)
I actually describe it as the most developmentally appropriate curriculum that I've seen. ⁓ Meaning, for each of the age groups that you create content for, your stuff matches really well how kids learn at each of those levels. Whereas I think you look at a lot of different publishers out there and they may nail it with one age group and then another is either too much or too little, but it doesn't really find the sweet spot. And what you guys have been able to do is really nice.
David Rausch (28:08)
You know why that's
the case? Well, two things. ⁓ One of the things that really sets Go apart is that I am the sole author of all the lessons, no matter what the age group is. And that includes the, know, ⁓ Toe for Time is the video series for preschool, Journey Today Show for elementary. ⁓ I wrote all of those scripts too. And I have spent time in, I've been in the twos and threes.
Like I said earlier, I was a fours and fives small group leader forever. I was in the kindergarten first grade room. I was in the fourth and fifth grade room. I've been all across the gamut of children's ministry. And so I have experience with all of them. You might be surprised. ⁓ I don't know that this is the case for every curriculum, but with a lot of curriculum, especially bigger publishing companies, they contract the writing out.
And it goes to some people who have ⁓ not a whole lot of children's ministry experience. ⁓ They've never sat on a floor with a group of four and five-year-olds doing activities with them to know like, hey, you can't expect them to do ABC. Or if you give them too many of these things, it's gonna go off the rails.
Jeremy O'Neill (29:15)
Mm-hmm.
David Rausch (29:35)
And so that's, I think a lot of times why curriculum ends up not being ⁓ developmentally appropriate is because it's being written by people who just don't have the experience with that age group of kids.
Jeremy O'Neill (29:36)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, no, it's a really good point. I do feel like practitioners need to be a big part of the process. Otherwise you get stuff that sounds really great on paper, but in practice it falls apart. I'll tell you what, a lot of people don't realize I put a book out a couple of months ago about VBS. A lot of people think that was my first book. It's actually my second. My first ⁓ was one that was actually an internal thing primarily. It is available on Amazon, but it was primarily written for our church. And it was a storybook.
David Rausch (29:53)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy O'Neill (30:17)
for primarily preschoolers, like that age group. And I'll tell you what, I think what I never thought in million years I would ever write a children's storybook. But I think being in a classroom with two and three year olds, with four and five year olds, and seeing what they respond to and the type of language that works with them and what really lands really helped a lot. It's like, listen, if I tried to write that book five years ago before I had a little bit more hands-on experience with that, it would have been a really horrible book.
And who knows, maybe it still is. But we got good feedback and a lot of families seem to enjoy it. Yeah, but it helped a lot. You have to have that experience. And I do think a big part of what sets you guys apart and makes you distinct and unique is what you just described. Because even if you have practitioners there, I think the bigger the publisher is, sometimes the more... ⁓
David Rausch (30:51)
I doubt it. Yes. Yeah.
Jeremy O'Neill (31:13)
gosh, I don't want to be super critical, but sometimes the final product becomes a little bit robotic, you know, because this content has to go through a gauntlet. Like it's a machine that all this goes through and there's layers and so many different people have to sign off on different things. And I think what I've noticed about the go curriculum is there is a human and a personal touch to it. Like a real person wrote this.
David Rausch (31:24)
Yes.
Well, part of it is, yeah, part of that is style too. ⁓ My writing style has always been very conversational and very approachable, very human, as you might put it. ⁓ I've never felt like, you know, if you come from maybe a little bit more of a traditional church background or something that you have to speak in such a voice in order to be respected.
Jeremy O'Neill (31:37)
into that and it's felt.
David Rausch (32:02)
And ⁓ yeah, like I just, I didn't come from that background and I'm not a very respectable person. no, mean, I kid, I kid. I have no illusions that I'm gonna try to make people feel like, this is a very respectable gentleman after reading some of my stuff. You even see that in Feeding Faith. In Feeding Faith, ⁓ I mean, we're talking about some really ⁓ deep children's ministry,
Jeremy O'Neill (32:13)
No.
David Rausch (32:31)
philosophical stuff, we're talking about, ⁓ you know, approach to discipleship, child discipleship. But I wanted to write the book that I want to read. And I don't like reading dry, stale, boring books. And so I put as much humor in it as I possibly could. ⁓ Story after story in there, there's tons of illustrations in there, beginning with the story of how I almost died just
Not even a year ago when I was in Peru. That's an exciting story. That's in the first two chapters but Yeah, like that. That's just my approach to writing is just make it fun I want people to enjoy the process I want them to laugh. I want the kids to laugh. I want the curriculum to be funny Especially we've got for our elementary videos. Like I said, it's called the journey today show. It's hilarious
Jeremy O'Neill (32:59)
Ha
David Rausch (33:27)
Like that was my goal is like, I want to make people laugh. ⁓ I want this to be as funny as I could possibly make it. And that's the feedback that we get all the time from churches is that, I mean, kids just, they love it because we're goofballs. We're not taking it ⁓ more serious than we should.
Jeremy O'Neill (33:46)
Yeah, certainly. I think that is ⁓ probably what makes kids ministry people special is you often don't get people who are all that stoic. You get people who are human and lively and fun. I think the kids wing is usually the funnest part of church. ⁓ One of the things I really like about Go is the timeline that you guys have chosen, or I guess you would call it your scope and sequence or scope and cycle. ⁓
David Rausch (33:57)
Right. Yeah.
Jeremy O'Neill (34:12)
You guys were one of the first that I remember having that type of flow where it's Old Testament in the fall leading up to Christmas, the beginning of the New Testament, going through that and then cycling through. Like it had a rhythm that actually fit our calendar really well between Christmas and Easter and all those things. Were you guys the first doing that? Was anybody else doing that at the time? Because I feel like when I came across Go, I don't know if I saw anybody that had a rhythm.
David Rausch (34:28)
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy O'Neill (34:40)
that fit so seamlessly.
David Rausch (34:42)
and no. So prior to us, True from David C. Cook, True had the closest to what we ultimately created. They had Chronological in a year. But the thing that frustrated me so much about it is that they were in the Old Testament until like middle or end of January.
And so was like late January or early February, you did the story of the birth of Jesus. So a full month, month and a half after Christmas time, and the Christmas lesson wasn't really about the birth of Jesus. And then you also had, it was the Easter lesson came like in the middle of June. And so,
During actual Easter that also wasn't about the death and resurrection of Jesus and that I was like, my goodness This is so frustrating and also while I'm using it. I'm thinking this is so fixable, too ⁓ So ultimately when I started go curriculum, I'm like I I definitely want to do chronological I want to do it in a year and there's a reason for that gospel project Was and still is doing it in three years. I just thought that that was way too long of a story you also have that same problem of
you know, being in the middle of the minor prophets come Christmas, and then possibly even still during Easter because you're there forever. ⁓ So ultimately I'm like, yeah, I want to go through the Bible, but I want to do it in a year. But I also want the birth of Jesus to land on Christmas and the death of Jesus to land on Easter, which wasn't really that difficult. ⁓ Ultimately what it meant is just that we had to go through the entire Bible over the course of 10 months instead of 12.
Jeremy O'Neill (36:17)
Mm-hmm.
David Rausch (36:24)
But that gave us the opportunity during the two summer months, June and July, to kind of step out of the meta-narrative of scripture and hit some other things that are still important, but that don't necessarily contribute to the bigger story. Things like the poetic books in the Old Testament or some of the epistles in the New Testament. So that's what we do during those two months during the summer is hit those ⁓ more poetic books.
Jeremy O'Neill (36:50)
that has influenced the way that I've even created my own scope and sequences. Like I've been at churches where we've created our own content. And I think what you guys have done was a huge influence in the way that we're actually going to structure and have things flow. ⁓ because like you said, it's really clunky when you have to start going out of order or when you're talking about some random topic or theme, but then Christmas is there. You got to talk about Christmas. You can't not. And so I love the way that you guys have done that.
David Rausch (36:57)
Yes.
Exactly.
Jeremy O'Neill (37:19)
even when I've like pieced together free curriculums and tried to make it fit within its own timeline, I still try and make it match that. I've done Old Testament in the fall, New Testament in the spring for probably almost a decade now, largely because of seeing how you guys have done it. So thank you for helping us discover something that we probably wouldn't have seen.
David Rausch (37:34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, that, you know what though, Jeremy,
that brings up a bigger point though, is ⁓ I don't think that I could have created Go curriculum without having, number one, created curriculum when I was at Promise Land, but then number two, having used the published curriculum that was out there when I was at the church in St. Louis. And oftentimes it was through my frustrations that I was able to
to form go curriculum. You it wasn't because I used this and I loved this part and I loved that and I take, it was like, I like this curriculum, but this is so frustrating. And if I were to create a curriculum, I would not do this. You know, I'd use curriculum where it was like, materials were kind of like, I'm supposed to get what? Or build, how am I gonna, you know,
Jeremy O'Neill (38:18)
Ha ha.
David Rausch (38:34)
Especially I was at a larger church and it's like I've got to get one of these for every kid We'll spend our entire year's budget just on one lesson and this is week after week after week And so I was like, okay, you know, we've got to make when I create small group lessons We're gonna use materials, but I'm gonna use things that you already have at home or around the church ⁓ You know because that was a frustration of mine same thing with the scope and sequence You know same thing with the fun and engagement same thing with the biblical depth. I'm like, yeah
I would do this differently, I would do that differently. So sometimes it's in those frustrations that we have. ⁓ That's where so many great things are born. And that goes across the board. That's not just a children's ministry thing or a ministry thing. I mean, so many of the products that we use day in and day out were probably formed by a person who had used something like that and was just frustrated with it. And they thought that they could do it different and they could do it better. ⁓ And so,
Having those frustrations is not a bad thing. It's teaching you something. It's teaching you how you could do it different.
Jeremy O'Neill (39:39)
I agree. think sometimes the best solutions come from a problem first, you know, and then you realize, hey, what can we do that's going to make our life a little bit easier moving forward? ⁓ well, listen, David, there are so many things I still want to ask you about. but we're coming up on time. I do want to say to everybody, listen, if you haven't gotten a copy of feeding faith, do it. We'll put a link in, in the show notes to this, David, if people want to follow along with you and the things that you're up to, where would you direct them?
David Rausch (40:09)
Yeah, so if you want to learn about GoCurriculum, just go to GoCurriculum.com. ⁓ And if you want to check out Feeding Faith, then you can find it on Amazon. Just look for Feeding Faith by David Rausch or even just Feeding Faith. ⁓ Or if you want to buy it in bulk, you can also go to GoCurriculum.com, go to the store. There's a store button at the top.
Scroll down to the bottom and then you can find Feeding Faith and you can buy it in copies of 10 or 25 or however many you want to take through with your team.
Jeremy O'Neill (40:45)
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because this is one of those books that I think would be really great for staff teams and leadership teams to go through together. Like chapter by chapter, it's the type of content that I think would be really, really great ⁓ for that type of thing.
David Rausch (40:51)
Yes!
Yeah,
we created a study guide for the book. So we've already done the book study heavy lifting for you. Every chapter has ⁓ some discussion questions for you. It's got the big, the main point and some action steps that you can take. ⁓ So yeah, we've already created a resource to help you do this as a book study with your team.
Jeremy O'Neill (41:21)
All right. Well, David, thank you for coming on for everybody listening. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.
