Stanley Thompson III, youth ministry coordinator at Saint Mary, Cherry Hill. is seen in a screenshot from “Christ’s Kids,” a Children’s Liturgy of the Word program streamed every week from the parish.
Like many Americans, Stanley Thompson III found COVID-19 restrictions drastically changed his job, forcing him to rely on technology as a substitute for face-to-face interaction. When that interaction is with squirmy children between the ages of 4 and 9, the technology better be good.
As youth ministry coordinator at the Parish of Saint Mary in Cherry Hill, Thompson is responsible for Christ’s Kids, which is the parish Children’s Liturgy of the Word. Before social distancing, at the Liturgy of the Word during Sunday Mass, the young children would be escorted out of the main church and into the chapel for a short, age-appropriate lesson on the day’s Scripture reading. When the lesson was over, they would return to the pews with their parents.
After the parish started streaming Masses, Thompson started reaching out to the parish children Mister Rogers-style with a Christ’s Kids video on Facebook and YouTube every week.
“The idea of the show is to capture the in-person program and present it in a polished ‘Blue’s Clues’ style,” said Thompson, referring to the successful children’s educational television program that, in its original run, aired 1996-2006.
Of course, “Blues Clues” had Niclelodeon and a team of producers and researchers behind it, as well as a budget of $150,000 just to produce a pilot for the program.
Thompson, on the other hand, is a one-man show. He’s responsible for planning the program, presenting it and taping it. The only thing he doesn’t have to do is pick out the Scripture readings for the day.
“The original plan was to have a video that would run five minutes tops without any photos or activities,” he said, “but I realized during the recording of the first episode that it would have to be more than that to keep it interesting.”
The average video can be up to 12 or 13 minutes and includes illustrations of Bible stories and Thompson offering lessons that children can understand, from using a shamrock to talk about the Trinity to using the sound of bouncing balls to illustrate the importance of listening for what God is saying through the stories of the Bible.
The process can be both difficult and exhausting, he said.
“On average, it takes four hours of prep work, including researching the readings and writing the scripts; two hours to record; and eight to 20 hours to edit the video, depending on the amount of scenes, graphics and pictures used in the episode, totaling from 14 to 26 hours,” he said.
“Recording the show itself takes longer than I would like it to since I can have many bad takes, even when there is a script right below the camera for me to read off of,” he added.
At the end of the summer, Thompson said, Christ’s Kids will be limited to the Gospel and homily, but the full-length program will resume in May 2021. (A “Behind the Scenes” season finale episode is being prepared for sometime in early September.)
In the meantime, he will be focusing on the parish youth group, which was planned to relaunch back in March – around the time he was researching equipment and software for the parish to start streaming Sunday Mass – and working on a series of intergenerational events.
“This way, we can still include the favorite elements of the program, along with the ability to offer more interactive online — and eventually in-person — activities for families and parishioners of all ages,” he said.
Christ’s Kids can be found on the Saint Mary, Cherry Hill, YouTube page or viewed after the 10 a.m. parish Mass on Facebook.
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