This is the Truth Network. This is Andy Thomas from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we discover what it means to be a wholehearted man. Your chosen Truth Network podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to If Not for God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope.
Here is your host, Mike Zwick. All right, this is If Not For God with Mike Zwick, and I'm with my good friend Robbie Dilmore. We are interviewing a guy, and my kids, Robbie, are super, super excited about this show because they watch something it's on YouTube. And if you go check it out, please check this out. It's called Kids Ministry Tools, and it's K-I-D-S Ministry Tools.
And it's with a guy named Josh Wells. And Josh actually started this show, was it right around COVID, Josh? Yes, sir, that's right. Yeah. What got you what got you what got you uh into the show.
What what what made you want to do it?
Well really though, you know Kind of like a need spawns a response. And so our children didn't have anything because they were all locked at their homes. whether through fear or shutdown or whatever the case may be. And so we started simply for our own kids. At our church, which at the time we were we have a bus ministry at our church, and we were busing in about 550 every single week.
and driving a crowd was about one hundred and twenty kids. In my junior church alone. And so it kind of like went from that to Well, almost nothing. And so the kids needed something. And, you know, and we teach, hey, you know, we need to listen to the right kind of music.
We need to listen to things that influence us for right and put our minds on the things of God. But yet there wasn't nothing that I was able to point them to and say, go watch this, or you can listen to this, or you can, you know, we were very limited. I can't say there was nothing, but there is. It's just rare to find. And it's hard to point it out to a kid and get them to actually sit down and watch it.
And so we decided, hey, let's go ahead and do that. And it actually was two different channels to begin with. Uh we had one for the teachers. and one for the kids. And then we kind of just went all in and just combined it both.
Yeah, and so you know when I think about this, there are so many channels that my kids, they kind of got into and they started watching them, and a lot of them are not Christian channels at all.
Now, you know, they're not cursing or it's not bad or anything like that, but the Bible says to raise up a child in the way that they should go, and when they are older, they will not depart from it. And in Matthew 19, 14, Jesus said, Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And so I heard you talk about, and I think it was one of your shows where you were talking to the parents, where you said that most children, Josh, or most people, when they come to Christ, it's actually at a young age. Is that right? That is correct.
It's around 80% of the people that are Christians. became Christian when they were little. Yes, sir. Yeah, and so, you know, I was talking to you a little bit before, and I think I sent you a message. You've done many shows, but you I've heard you talk about in some of your shows evangelism and the importance of evangelism.
How do you explain that to a child?
Well To a child, the understanding is Everybody and anybody can accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. They just have to come to the understanding that obviously they realize that they're a sinner. And explaining that to a child sometimes might be difficult, especially if they're not even raised in church. But understanding that they're a center, you can point it back to simply bad. What are some bad things that you know you've done?
And you don't have to get a confession out of them, but to the understanding, that child knows that they have done something wrong. And then when you can bring that like, okay, for instance, I use the wordless book a lot of times. I know that's a a very old tool now, but we've even developed other tools that we give the kids, even made some children gospel tracks. to where they can take that and show their kids, show their friends of how they can know for sure if they die, they go to heaven. through Jesus Christ.
But Paul told Timothy, he said, look, He said Um that from your your child, thou hat, from a child, thou hast known the holy scriptures. And our L, he says, to make thee wise unto salvation through the faith. which is in Christ Jesus. See? Paul at the Timothy said, You've known this since you were a kid.
So I think it's very important that From a child, they're brought up. I believe it's Ephesians chapter 6 says, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And so Joel says to tell your children of it. And let your children tell their children. and their children another generation.
And so it's definitely something that needs to be Tight. And sometimes it's as simple as what we used to call the Romans Road. Uh And training these kids with the verses every Sunday, going through a cycle, even, of making sure they understand the verses and they're able to. Once a child can explain it, you know they caught it. If they can't explain it yet, they may not be able to.
Say they caught it all the way, but But also, you know, as you're saying all that, I can't help but reflect on the fact that.
so many families go the other way. The children come to Christ first and then they the parents want to see what's going on and that ends up as a tremendous evangelism tool for churches to You know, the kids bring the parents. Yeah. Well, it kind of reminds me of Psalm seventy eight, where he says, We will not hide them from their children. Showing the generation to come the praises of the Lord.
It's not something that I'm going to hide from somebody else's child. I'm going to try and tell their child also about the Lord. And it's very important, very important to reach the next generation. There's a dearth of it right now, and there's so many churches nowadays that they pretty much bring them in just to entertain instead of actually teaching them God's Word. And so we have a saying here in our children's department, we don't make fun of learning, but we make learning fun.
And so we do the best we can to try and teach them, but make it catchy enough uh not unscriptural, but to make it understandable and fun to learn. Yeah, I just love what you're doing, Joshua. And for a lot of folks out there, you're in a church where you're concerned that you're not seeing a lot of kids coming or a lot of younger families. But the neat thing is, you guys not only have this program that people watch online, you have phenomenal tools for other churches to come on board with the teaching, right? Yes, sir, and 100% free.
And so, yeah, they just have to go online and download it. And so that that kids Kids ministry tools. Kids' ministry tools. I'll get it eventually. Kids ministry tools, right?
Yeah, kids' ministry tools. This is not like a small channel. I mean, you guys have 278,000 subscribers on YouTube, millions of views, and you're picking up about 800 subscribers each day. For somebody who's out there listening, who wants to help children, who wants to share the gospel, what is something that you've kind of learned that's helped your channel to grow and help the children?
Well, we actually started out with a pretty strong base because we sent it out to all the families of our church. Uh, we're not exactly a small church, and so. Um It only took about two weeks to get to a thousand subscribers. Um And that being said, it just kind of shot up from there. Um my dad was an evangelist for 13 years.
So we had been in hundreds of churches And we've been a resource For other churches for a while, so it's not necessarily something that just sprung up since 2020. Um I I served with my brother doing vacation Bible schools for six years. and every single week. Of the summer, we would be in a different church. And so I've been working with children's ministry since I was pretty much out of the children's ministry.
And so we've had a, we already had a an influence, if you would say, of some degree. Yes, sir. It's been amazing to see it grow like it has. And that's only been within the last two years that it shot Uh actually It's only been about six months since we hit 100,000 subscribers. Wow.
And so you went from 100,000 to 278,000 subscribers in six months. You've got millions of views. And it's one of the go ahead, Robbie. No, no, no. I'm just.
When God anoints something and God wants to get it out there, you know, it's clear. And I I love Joshua's heart. You heard him say it's all free. Like he this isn't this is for the kingdom, right? And when when God recognizes that this stuff is is making Generational differences, right?
Each one of these children is one child that would affect generations in that family of believers as they come to Christ and get hungry for the word and to learn that when you're young, neither one of us, you or I, you know, got that. We're in the Other percentage. But, you know, how cool would it be to be that much further along in your walk with Christ at this point in time? And I love that, you know, that they're doing that. Yeah, and we live in a different age, Robbie, than we did 30 years ago.
So 30 years ago, you had to. Then I heard there was a local pastor from a church in Mebben, and he said there was a time, he said, Mike, where if you. If I wanted to tell you that God was good, I would actually have to go up to you face to face and tell you that God is good. And by the way, I still believe that that is the best form of evangelism. He said, but nowadays, I could take a picture or take a video and post it on social media.
And now, hundreds or thousands, or in the case of Josh, millions of people can hear that same message. And to me, that's pretty exciting. Amen. I agree. I mean, every day I'm astonished to see what the Lord is doing.
It's like. Even the gospel film in Spanish that we helped put together. with over two hundred I'm sorry, with over two million views on it now, it's just like I mean, that's One thing to understand too is it's usually not just one person watching.
Sometimes it's all the kids of the family, or sometimes it's a family watching it together. And so it's multiple people hearing the gospel at the same time sometimes. And so I mean, I I would dare say it's a good three Three to even four million people that has seen that, you know, just from that one video. It just doesn't cease to amaze me of what the Lord's doing with it. He said if I be lifted up, I would draw all men into myself.
And so that's the key thing there. I think he even said in John chapter 3 to Nicodemus, he said, Even so, as the Son of Man, sorry, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And so as a person lifts up the Lord, The Lord's going to draw it. Yeah, it's that is absolutely the case.
And so, you know. The beautiful thing of it is that If you start out with the idea of we're going to help this Sunday school class, the next thing you know, we're going to help more and more and more. And God you know, COVID was a horrible, horrible thing, you know, in so many different ways for a lot of churches. It buried them. But out of it, you know, springs all these new tools.
And I love the fact. Of the name of the ministry is kids' ministry tools. This isn't like just for our kids here, and I assume you're in Dallas, Texas by the area code. Yes, sir. And so this just isn't for the kids in Texas or the kids in the United States.
Now you've you've expanded it to the world by offering it in different languages. And again, God will it's amazing. He brings you the resources, right? In order to reach more people in more different ways. But this wouldn't have been available You know.
25 years ago, there was no YouTube, right? Or maybe 30 years ago. And it's kind of cool for such a time as this that God has brought this tool as it is that generation of children that God gave you a heart for.
So I'm really curious: how did, you know, before your YouTube channel and before all that, how did you end up in youth ministry, in kids' ministry?
So when my dad was in evangelism, Um there would be a lot of churches we were in and some of them didn't have anything for the kids. And so my dad offered to those pastors, hey, would you, while we're here, We kind of came as a package deal, you know. We would sing as a family, my dad would preach. And my brothers and I would run a children's program. And so even for a week-long revival, Uh we would start an auditorium with everybody and then Uh we would get all the way up to the preaching time and My family would sing and then we would take the kids out and Basically preach on their level, you know, uh where they can understand.
And yeah, I've done that since I was pretty much twelve. Uh and so I did that with my brother. And then uh he started when we came to this church, they didn't have a junior church Well, my dad became the pastor here and He was voted in 2009. And he did the church in 2010. And uh th they had a junior church for the kids that came on the bus, but nothing for the drive-in crowd.
And so we were like, well, let's go ahead and get something going. And dad never had a vacation Bible school or anything like that. And so. we went ahead and started all that here as well and and we've watched the children's Department here grow leaps and bounds. And so I've been the children's instructor here since 2000.
Fifteen. Um Running. uh the I was in the Bible College here Before that, and so had a lot on my hands otherwise, and I was a bus captain and taught in our. be children's church. Um And then it just kind of grew from there.
And so that's another whole angle that a lot of people may not be all that familiar with, is that bus. You said you had over 500 kids that are being bussed in. I mean, how exactly does that work?
Okay.
Okay, okay.
So we have sixteen vehicles right now and we before COVID we were averaging five fifty.
Now we're we're we pretty much had to start all the way over after COVID. A lot of the kids either moved or got kicked out of their apartment because boom, now the rent was due because they had all that forbearance, you know. But anyhow, long story short on that, starting all the way over at the end of 2020 with all the buses. We've recorded it started from zero. But now we're running about 350 on the buses.
My route and the workers that helped me on our route, we had 72. Last Sunday, um We've had about eight families join the church. Uh from my bus route. And we're in two public schools where we have Bible clubs in the school after school as an elective. And we run about seventy in those public schools.
And those those Bible clubs are Are those part of Child Evangelism Fellowship? Are you guys doing those yourself? No, we do it yeah, we do it all ourselves. Yeah. Well, and one of the things that I was thinking, Josh, is that the Bible talks about, it says that we should work six days and then take a day off.
And I think some people may view it the opposite. They want to work one day and take the other six off. But what I've heard you saying is that, you know, people look at the YouTube channel and they see there's 278,000 subscribers and they see that there's millions of views and you're helping children really all over the world, especially with the video that you did in Spanish. I'm thinking there's probably, you know, throughout Mexico, all throughout South America, all over the world, which is awesome. But what they see is they see the sizzle.
They see this. They see, man, this is exciting. This is good. But what they don't see is all of the hard work that you've put in for all of those years. All of the hard work that your dad put in for all of those years.
And we were talking about evangelism a little bit earlier, Josh. I've actually heard that children who are Christians, when they go off to college or they leave, a lot of those Christians leave the faith. But. Children who are Christians of parents who do evangelism. And especially when those children go out and do evangelism themselves, more of them actually stick with the faith because they've, I guess you could say they've got a dog in the fight and they're seeing they're on the front lines themselves.
And you've been on the front lines. And so, yes, you've got this great show, but it really came after years and years of putting the hard work into the ministry. Amen. Yes, sir. And a lot of that, when you talk about evangelism and doing that, If you put a child in the position where And I'm not talking about a young child.
You don't really want to put them in a dangerous situation. But if you put an old enough to understand child, maybe 11, 12, and up. into a position where they see the end result of sin. without having to touch the sin. You see what I'm saying?
They see what smoking leads to. They see what drugs leads to without having to touch it. They see what immorality leads to without having to tamper with it. They see what. The end result of sin is without having to touch it, and that's exactly what evangelism does when you're going out and you're talking to people.
You're seeing the hurt, you're seeing the pain, you're seeing the suffering. Uh and the regret. And If you're not out there actually seeing that, you know, And all you see is the advertisements. I mean, Miller Light doesn't show the advertisements of the end result of a guy bending over the toilet. Um you know, having a hard time the next morning.
It's not going to advertise the end result of sin. It just shows The grass is green. It's nice, it's pretty, or it smells nice, or whatever the case may be. And so, but if a person can actually see, hey, I don't have to go that way because I see the end result thereof. I don't want that.
I mean, you know, if somebody saw obviously, everybody knows that the end result of poison. as death.
Well, if they see sin as poison, They see 'cause about this day for the wages of sin is Yeah.
So if they see the end result of it, I think it helps. We're not having to see the Oh, talk. partake of the sin. I 100% agree with that, Josh. And Robbie and I were talking about on our last show earlier how, you know, when God said that the day that you eat this apple from the knowledge of the tree from the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.
Well, the problem that a lot of people see, and Robbie had talked about this, is Adam did not die that day. And so what can happen is, Josh, is that, you know, if somebody can go out and have a few drinks one night or they can get drunk one night, the next day or the next week, they're okay. But what they don't realize is that sin can lead to addiction. And yes, you're talking about being over the toilet and, you know, throwing up or whatever after a night of drinking, but there's, it even gets worse because the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
And so even going further into that, the person who may be drinking too much or drinking, you know, and they start off small, but at least it goes to, what about the person with? Cirrhosis of the liver. What about the person who drinks themselves to death?
So, Josh, we're part of a pro-life ministry here in Burlington, North Carolina, in Alamance County, and it's Arms of Grace Ministry. And they actually go out and they admonish women not to have an abortion, not to do it. But what they also see is that when a lot of these women or younger men are out and they're just say, hey, I just want to go out and fornicate. I just want to go out and have sex. And they don't see the consequences of it.
But now we're seeing in our county there is a widespread thing going on of STD, sexually transmitted diseases.
Well, when they're thinking about, hey, I just want to go out and fornicate, they're not thinking about something, but the wages of sin is death. And another actually beautiful verse is in James. It's. You know, chapter 1, verse 14 and 15, it says, But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it's conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it's fully grown, brings death.
And just before that, he said, Let no man say, When he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.
So we can't say, well, you know, well, God gave me. the flesh God gave me well, God doesn't bring the temptation. Exactly, exactly. And it's a beautiful Way that, you know, we hear it all the time is sin will take you further than you wanted to go. You'll stay longer than you wanted to stay, and you're going to pay way more than you wanted to pay, especially when you think about payday is death.
Yeah. And it's funny that you, you mentioned that, Robbie, because that's my profile picture that I put up this morning, what you just said. That's my profile picture, literally what you just said. And sometimes, Josh, and I'm sure you've seen this too in your ministry, but you kind of have an aha moment where you're working and working and working. And then all of a sudden, you see God break through and you realize it was nothing else but God that did this in your life.
I'm sure you've seen that in your own life, Josh. Yeah. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We didn't even start it to be like Famous or to build a channel, or to, I mean, that's not what we even started it for.
We started it to be a help to other children's ministries and to be a help to the kids that we were reaching, you know. And it just so happened to go a little further than that. And if so be, then praise the Lord. Right. And so the other thing that I, you know, I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, I'm wondering, is that once you have that many views and subscribers and whatever, there's an income stream that's possible from that.
Are you able to use that for ministry as well?
So anything made for kids on YouTube really gets pennies on the dollars compared to something that does not have to be made for kids. Really? Because the way that YouTube makes it is there's a ruling that they're not allowed to do personalized ads, and that's where the money's at.
So the money is for personalized ads. Like you've been looking at office chairs, and so now when you're watching a YouTube video, there's an advertisement for an office chair. Whereas they're not allowed to track children's search history. And so therefore, when it's a children's video, they're not allowed to share. Show things that the children have been looking at.
So, therefore, a person that is trying to advertise cannot do so according to the child's search history. That's really great news.
So, in other words, in other words, if you're in this for the money, you're not going to make a lot of money, anyways. And so, the other thing that I heard you say, Josh, is that you were doing this. You were doing this for the right reasons, anyways.
So, if you're not making a bunch of money with this, you're just you love the fact that you're able to help so many people. Yes, sir. And I mean, there's a little money that comes in, it does trickle compared to what I do have another YouTube channel. That does not have to be marked as made for kids. It's the Bible Bricks stories, and whereas Bible stories with the bricks, you know?
Yes. Um But still, that one doesn't have to be made for Market as Made for Kids. We literally just started that one like not even 90 days ago, and it's already monetized. And it's making around the same with like 3,000 views a day compared to Kids Ministry Tools making 3 to 4 million views a day. And so anything made for kids doesn't make a whole lot of money.
That's fascinating. But that's actually, it's actually reassuring to me that YouTube has some kind of conscience. Yeah. They're working it out. And so.
Mike, unfortunately, we just got a couple of minutes left. I really love the heart of what you're doing, Joshua. What would you say to the kids that might be listening to this show to encourage them to be serious about walking with Jesus? Have you ever gone on a phone call and you got put on the voicemail? And then you called again and you got voicemail?
And then you called again and got voicemail? I would say that when we walk with God and we never read our Bible, I would say that's like going straight to voicemail every single time. When you call on him, you call on him, you call on him, and you never actually seek an answer because the way that God speaks to us today is through his word. And in so doing, when you call on the Lord, but you never actually seek his answer, it's like going straight to God's voicemail. And so my encouragement to them would be, Hey, Jesus loves you.
He's written a beautiful love note for you. an instruction book where we can learn how he wants us to live. And how he wants us to grow. As 2 Peter said, but grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
God bless you. Josh, thanks so much for coming on, buddy. And if you guys are out there listening, you got children or grandchildren, make sure to send them kids' ministry tools, the YouTube channel. And, Josh, I wish you the best with all your endeavors. Yeah, awesome.
Yes, sir. God bless you all. Have a wonderful day. If not for God.
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