Rebecca Cannon: Embracing Her Role in Preschool Ministry
Today we’re charting a course through the wonderful realm of early childhood spiritual education with a very special guest.In this episode, we’re joined by Rebecca Cannon, the new Preschool Ministry Director at First Baptist Melbourne. Rebecca’s journey hasn’t been a straight path; it’s taken her from aspirations in wedding planning to pursuing a business degree, with a pivotal stop at Chick-fil-A, and even engaging in the meaningful work of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But it’s her current mission that’s shaping young lives that brings her to us today.
We’ll explore Rebecca’s leap into the world of ministry with her family, her candid thoughts on stepping into this new role after being a stay at home mom for a season, and how she’s discovered her own calling to serve part-time—aligning perfectly with her vocation as a dedicated mom.
With a passion for teaching and stewardship, Rebecca is enthusiastic about fostering spiritual growth from an early age, integrating catechism, and preparing the littlest ones to participate in worship.
Join us as we touch on everything from space travel icebreakers to the nuts and bolts of volunteer management, the impact of children’s ministry, and the importance of consistent love in learning environments. So, strap in and ready your heart as we lift off with Rebecca Cannon on this episode of Mission Control.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro and Ice Breaker
04:01 Leading preschool ministry, loving my new job.
08:30 Uncertain start, found faith, led ministry, parenthood.
10:14 Callings can be simple, not mystical experiences.
15:54 Seminary ending, considering future, offered preschool ministry.
18:24 Embracing leadership, accepting hard decisions for others.
23:12 Encouraging kids to trust in Christ, participate.
26:25 Discover church needs, follow your calling, consider circumstances.
28:01 Get involved at First Baptist in Melbourne.
30:39 Teaching preschoolers has benefits for communication skills.
Resources Mentioned:
– “Is God Calling Me?” by Jeff Iorg- A recommended read on embracing God’s calling.
– The New City Catechism for Kids
Connect with Us:
– Visit our website at launchme.church
– Follow us on Facebook & Instagram at @FBCMel.
– Send us your thoughts and questions at info@fbcmel.org.
Support the Show:
– Share this episode with your friends and family who might be interested in international missions and faith journeys.
Episode Transcript:
Amanda Levy [00:00:01]:
God has given all of us a mission to make disciples here and everywhere for the glory of God minus ten and nine. We want our church to be a launch pad for sending people out on the mission God has for them. Regardless of who you are, we all have a role to play. We are all involved in God’s story. We pray that the story shared through mission control will encourage you to see how God is calling you to be used by him.
Amanda Levy [00:00:35]:
Hello. Thanks for joining us in mission control today. My name is Amanda Levy and I’m the communications director here at First Baptist Melbourne. And today we have Rebecca Cannon joining us. Rebecca just moved back to Melbourne. But you grew up here in Melbourne, like, your whole life? Most of your life, your childhood?
Rebecca Cannon [00:00:53]:
Most of my life, yes. We moved here. My parents lived in Ohio. Decided they wanted to live in Florida when I was five.
Amanda Levy [00:01:02]:
Good decision.
Rebecca Cannon [00:01:03]:
Oh, yeah. And then, of course, I spent four years in Orlando.
Amanda Levy [00:01:06]:
Yes, but you grew up, like, your childhood, for the most part, was at first Baptist Melbourne.
Rebecca Cannon [00:01:12]:
Since. Yeah, second grade.
Amanda Levy [00:01:13]:
Till Rebecca and I went to UCF together. She was just giving me a hard time because my cup, which is technically off camera here, the UCF logo, I didn’t have it showing, but I am proud. UCF logo. Don’t hide it, Rebecca. I hope it’s also a proud UCF.
Rebecca Cannon [00:01:28]:
I think I’m not as good of a thing.
Amanda Levy [00:01:30]:
But you also have a degree from fit, right? That’s your MBA?
Rebecca Cannon [00:01:34]:
Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:01:34]:
All right, so she’s smarter than me. Yeah. So she grew up, the first child of Melbourne, went away for college, came back to Melbourne and then went away again after she got married and is now back in Melbourne. The pool is just too strong.
Rebecca Cannon [00:01:50]:
Can’t keep her saying I think so. I keep telling people we didn’t think we were going to move back. And at least two people have said, nobody does. Or, you know, me neither.
Amanda Levy [00:02:01]:
I feel like I hear a lot of people who move back.
Rebecca Cannon [00:02:03]:
Yeah, there’s so many.
Amanda Levy [00:02:04]:
Like Aaron still. We had him on the podcast early on. He moved back. Hey, but before we get into the thick of all the depths of things, I thought we’d have a fun space icebreaker question. Let me pull up my space icebreaker stuff again. Space travel is becoming more common. Would you sign up for a trip to space?
Rebecca Cannon [00:02:28]:
You know, I’m going to say not right now because.
Amanda Levy [00:02:33]:
But would you ever sign up for.
Rebecca Cannon [00:02:35]:
A trip to space, ever? Maybe.
Amanda Levy [00:02:39]:
I feel like you’re more adventurous than me. You’ve been skydiving, right?
Rebecca Cannon [00:02:43]:
No.
Amanda Levy [00:02:43]:
Why do I have in my head, a visual skydiving.
Rebecca Cannon [00:02:47]:
I don’t know.
Amanda Levy [00:02:48]:
Okay, that’s cool.
Rebecca Cannon [00:02:50]:
Being a mom of young kids, everything is like, yes, but maybe when they grow up and are, like, stable, successful, godly adults, consider maybe I would go to.
Amanda Levy [00:03:02]:
Yeah, I feel like that’d be my answer, too. But if you were to go to space, is there somewhere in your mind that you’re like, that’s where I’d want to go? Is there a planet, an area?
Rebecca Cannon [00:03:12]:
See, I’ve been learning a little bit about space also because I’m a parent with young children, as one does, as.
Amanda Levy [00:03:20]:
A parent with young children does.
Rebecca Cannon [00:03:23]:
And from what I understand, there’s not a lot of safe places to go in. Know if we can go to Pluto.
Amanda Levy [00:03:32]:
Or something someday and see why they were.
Rebecca Cannon [00:03:39]:
Yeah, what’s the deal? Or like, Neptune. They look cool in pictures, but if someday that’s a possibility, who knows?
Amanda Levy [00:03:50]:
So, Rebecca, where does God. There’s really no good segue. There’s never been a good segue, so I don’t know why I keep doing it. Speaking of Neptune, speaking of Neptune, where does God currently have you on mission in your life?
Rebecca Cannon [00:04:01]:
So currently, as you have already noticed, we’ve been here for like 2 seconds. I have two small children. That’s a big part of my know, my, my mission. They are not yet christians, so we think about that a lot. But my job right now is the preschool. I think it’s preschool ministry ministry director, I should say it, right? So leading the preschool ministry team here at first Baptist Melbourne as of a couple of weeks ago. And yeah, I’m so far loving it.
Amanda Levy [00:04:42]:
How did you get here? Because I feel like. What was your degree in college?
Rebecca Cannon [00:04:48]:
Not preschool ministry.
Amanda Levy [00:04:50]:
When you first set out and you were like, embarking on the world of adulthood, what did you have in your head that you thought you were going to be doing?
Rebecca Cannon [00:04:59]:
That’s a good question. So I actually picked UCF. I don’t know if you know this. It’s kind of like we know each other, but you probably don’t know all this. I picked UCF because I wanted to be a hospitality major. So, like, weddings, events, tourism, and UCF, I think they’re the best in the nation. Or at least they were.
Amanda Levy [00:05:23]:
They have a good school for you.
Rebecca Cannon [00:05:24]:
Yeah, they’re in Orlando, Disney, all that jazz. So that’s why I picked UCF. I think the thought was wedding planner was how it started.
Amanda Levy [00:05:33]:
Okay.
Rebecca Cannon [00:05:34]:
And then I switched to a business major and know wasn’t sure if weddings was going to be the career I’ve helped a couple of friends with weddings. Weddings are awesome. Love events and planning and stuff. But then I started just saying, I just want to be the boss. That was my career aspiration.
Amanda Levy [00:05:56]:
Okay, so you switched to business.
Rebecca Cannon [00:05:59]:
Yeah. So I switched to business. Graduated, graduated, came back.
Amanda Levy [00:06:04]:
We worked with each other once before for a brief hot second, I forgot about. Yeah.
Rebecca Cannon [00:06:10]:
Yeah. So I was working at Chick fil A for a little bit. I thought I wanted to own a chick fil a. And then it probably coincided with my relationship with Taylor, who is my husband now. Started to know I would really like to be a wife and a mom, and started to think that maybe Chick fil a owner operator was not going to be the best career choice.
Amanda Levy [00:06:36]:
Like, jiving of those two.
Rebecca Cannon [00:06:37]:
Exactly like so. But I wasn’t married yet. So I was like, well, then I decided to get the master’s in business MBA. So I was living here. I was working at Chick fil A. They were gracious to let me cut back to part time while still being like, yeah, so that’s nice. Maybe I shouldn’t let other people know about that. And that was a huge blessing to where I could mostly pay my bills and do school.
Rebecca Cannon [00:07:15]:
So did the masters of business. Just kind of thinking like, I don’t know, again, I just want to. Being a leader, I like just organizing people and motivating people. And then before I finished that, ended up marrying Taylor and then ended up with FCA.
Amanda Levy [00:07:36]:
No, I knew that. No. Yeah, I was going to be my next lead.
Rebecca Cannon [00:07:41]:
Finished the getting close to finishing the NBA, got recruited. I guess Dan Carter, who is the director of FCA in this area, knew that I was kind of looking for just work. Yeah, a different career. And he asked me, hey, would you be interested in working with FCA? We want someone to minister to women or students, girls. I was like, wow. I mean, I’ve always really enjoyed getting to lead Bible studies and youth and things like that. I was like, well, I think I would really enjoy it. And he said, okay, the only thing is you do have to raise your own salary.
Rebecca Cannon [00:08:30]:
I’m like, wait, what? I was unsure about that, but ended up deciding as I started to just visit some FCA huddles. And I really enjoy this and just trusted that God would provide, and he did for a couple of years. So I did work with FCA full time. Loved that. Getting to minister to mostly high school girls. I had one FCA huddle, as we call it, Bible study with a group of high school teachers. That was really cool to be a part and worked with them for a couple of years till we had our first child. And then I’ve been staying home until I’m doing this job now.
Amanda Levy [00:09:22]:
Nice.
Rebecca Cannon [00:09:23]:
There’s been a few things.
Amanda Levy [00:09:24]:
Was there ever a moment in there where you’re like, I feel like God is leading me more towards working in ministry and less towards working in the corporate world? Or did you just kind of fall into it? There’s no wrong answer.
Rebecca Cannon [00:09:39]:
Yeah. So with FCA, when you go through some of the training, they ask you to think through your calling and people have different ideas of what that means and everything. And I think I’ve just. I really enjoyed it. I wanted to do it. I felt like it was a good thing. Sure. So I did it.
Amanda Levy [00:10:09]:
There you go.
Rebecca Cannon [00:10:12]:
Yeah. Did that answer the question? Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:10:14]:
No, I think that answered the question. I think sometimes the idea of a calling can feel really intimidating to people and I feel like it can sometimes put up a gate that’s not actually there in real life. And so I like to ask people about it because as people are listening or hearing other people’s stories, I think it’s nice to hear, oh, you don’t have to have this writing on super intense moment, but some people do, which is awesome. That’s awesome too. So not to discount that, but sometimes it is just being faithful too, when someone puts an opportunity in front of you and you realize, I would really enjoy this and I feel like God’s gifted me in this and so I’m going to do it. And you don’t have to have like a mystical experience.
Rebecca Cannon [00:11:01]:
Amen.
Amanda Levy [00:11:02]:
That’s why I ask it.
Rebecca Cannon [00:11:03]:
And I’ve learned that God just works so much through the desires that he gives us. He’s created us with certain strengths and interests. And whatever our circumstances, he is sovereign over where we live and who our family is and all those things. And our church. I’ve been learning a lot of just what a big part. The church is supposed to be a huge part of your life. And just thinking about it now, Dan was a part of my church, so he knew me, he knew who I was, what I liked to do, what I was capable of doing. And so as a brother in Christ, more mature than me saw, he was the one to encourage.
Rebecca Cannon [00:11:49]:
Yeah, praise God.
Amanda Levy [00:11:50]:
So you got married and then at some point, not to steal Taylor’s thunder, who is going to be on in the next episode, but at some point y’all moved. So can you talk me a little bit through what was that like in supporting that and figuring out where you fit into that. In that season.
Rebecca Cannon [00:12:05]:
Yeah. So that was unexpected. There’s been a lot of know. You just never know what God’s going to do. But that was definitely. It’s funny to hear Taylor talk about it. I don’t know how.
Amanda Levy [00:12:19]:
Tune in next episode.
Rebecca Cannon [00:12:22]:
But I really was not very interested in leaving Florida. Was not that kind of like, just got to get out of here. You’re happy here to live in my hometown. But Taylor, without going into too much detail, we decided that it was best for him to quit his job while I was pregnant with our first child.
Amanda Levy [00:12:48]:
I mean, I think that’s a wise idea for everybody.
Rebecca Cannon [00:12:51]:
No big deal. No big deal. But, I mean, praise God. We were really on the same page about it. He was just based on what we believe. We believed it was obeying God’s will, just some disagreements and beliefs. So here we were, however, halfway or so through being pregnant, and we both agreed that was the right thing. He thought maybe he would hope this is okay.
Rebecca Cannon [00:13:25]:
I’m saying this about that maybe he would come on staff with First Baptist to do college ministry.
Amanda Levy [00:13:32]:
Yeah.
Rebecca Cannon [00:13:33]:
And he had a meeting with a couple of the pastors, and he thought that they were going to, like, he.
Amanda Levy [00:13:38]:
Thought it was lining up. Yeah.
Rebecca Cannon [00:13:40]:
That they were going to be like, yeah, you should come. But they did not say that you should come work here. They said, we think you should go to seminary. I was like, what? He got home from that. I’m like, do they want us to do what? And so we started praying about that. And again, just listen to your church, your elders, the people in your church who know you, your pastors. Yeah. Pastor Scott in particular, just really encouraged Taylor that he thought seminary would just be really good for him, for.
Rebecca Cannon [00:14:18]:
He saw Taylor’s strengths and also he thought it would know, encouraging that, and also that it would be good for his weaknesses. We’ll let him share those if he wants to. I don’t know, on the next episode. So we started praying about that, and I guess I was about eight months pregnant when we told our family we were going to move to Louisville, Kentucky. And, yeah, just felt that we agreed with the pastor’s encouragement, and Taylor, he know, he knew he wanted to do ministry. And at that point, I was on board with him doing ministry and me being whatever pastor’s wife and whatever else, and so I was like, let’s do it. And I’m so thankful that we did. It was awesome.
Rebecca Cannon [00:15:08]:
It was a really great experience.
Amanda Levy [00:15:09]:
Awesome.
Rebecca Cannon [00:15:10]:
So we moved up there when our baby was about three months old.
Amanda Levy [00:15:13]:
Okay.
Rebecca Cannon [00:15:15]:
And actually, you know, that that is actually probably an easier time than having an older child who he didn’t know any better. Yeah. And he just sat there, so he’s pretty Chill.
Amanda Levy [00:15:29]:
Yeah, that’s good.
Rebecca Cannon [00:15:31]:
Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:15:32]:
All right, so now I’m going to fast forward a little bit so as not to steal Taylor’s thunder of things. But now let’s fast forward to coming back. What was the thought process into all of that? And now you’re working here. So you’ve been staying at home full time, and now you’re coming back to work. How has God kind of been moving in your life through all that?
Rebecca Cannon [00:15:54]:
So, yes, seminary was coming to an end and just thinking through what was next. And again, the pastors at first Baptist Melbourne talking to us and asking Taylor about what’s next for him. And we were talking to them and they were, you know, maybe I think we could have a role for you, Taylor. And what we really need is someone to do preschool ministry. And I was like, wait, what? Me? I don’t want to exaggerate, but I don’t think I’d ever considered doing preschool ministry. But as they kind of described it, I’m like, I think I would really enjoy that. And, yeah, just found myself thinking about it a lot and just how I could do that and how it would be a good thing for our family. They encouraged me to just apply, and they’re like, just send your resume to Pastor Jason.
Rebecca Cannon [00:17:03]:
So I did, and it all worked out.
Amanda Levy [00:17:07]:
You’re like three weeks in.
Rebecca Cannon [00:17:09]:
Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:17:09]:
So what are you thinking? The role is what excites you about it?
Rebecca Cannon [00:17:16]:
Yeah. As I got closer to starting work and everything, I realized this is kind of what I’ve been thinking for a while. It’s kind of like, checks all of my boxes of what I would want in a job once, know, had a baby, and then while we’re in Louisville, had another. You know, there’s just not a lot of things out there that are, like, for moms who don’t want to work full. Just. Anyway, I was like, what could I do? Because I would love to do something part time, but it has to make sense with our schedule and finding the right people to care for the kids and everything. I was just struggling with that. Maybe I should just stay home and tailor work more.
Rebecca Cannon [00:18:06]:
But, yeah, just kind of thinking, as I’ve been thinking, it would be so great if there was something part time that would just make sense for me to spend my time doing. And then also, like I said, I’ve been telling people that I want to be the boss?
Amanda Levy [00:18:22]:
I was going to bring it there, but.
Rebecca Cannon [00:18:24]:
Yeah, which is. That’s kind of a joke. But in this position, when I say I want to be the boss, I realized that being the boss, the person in charge who makes decisions, you have to be the bad guy sometimes, but you just have an opportunity to make a lot of people’s lives better. And there’s just a couple of us, there’s four of us who are on part of the preschool ministry team, and it feels weird to even say that I’m leading that team at this point, but that’s where we’re heading. They’re awesome. They’re still teaching me how to do everything. Not that I’m going to be having a ton of leadership over them, but also getting to lead, organize volunteers and just recognizing that somebody has to be the one to make hard choices and take responsibility if things go poorly. Not that it would ever happen, but if we make a decision and parents don’t like it, whatever we’re doing, or maybe volunteers don’t like it, I’m willing to be the one to do that.
Rebecca Cannon [00:19:40]:
Lord willing. I say that I hope that I would be able to do that because I want to do what’s best for the members of First Baptist who volunteer and the parents and the children that we’re caring for. And it’s just kind of exciting to get to make decisions and solve problems and just be a blessing to the body of Christ that is first Baptist by doing those things.
Amanda Levy [00:20:11]:
Yeah. What excites you about preschool ministry and what’s happening? At first, I’ve just Melbourne.
Rebecca Cannon [00:20:17]:
There’s a lot of little ones around here. My kids right now are one and almost three. And especially with the almost three year old, I just see. He is just a sponge. It’s just amazing. I mean, you know, I also have.
Amanda Levy [00:20:42]:
A three year old family.
Rebecca Cannon [00:20:44]:
I don’t know if you said this on your podcast or. Yeah, but we’ve started just trying to do so at home. We’ve started doing this thing called the new city catechism for kids. Have you heard of it? I haven’t, no. You should try it. Okay. So a catechism, if you don’t know, is just. You read a question and then an answer, and the idea is that you memorize the answer and it’s a doctrine, something about God.
Rebecca Cannon [00:21:18]:
But my son can repeat those things back and remember bits and pieces of them. And he’s three. Not even three. He’s about to be three.
Amanda Levy [00:21:27]:
Yeah.
Rebecca Cannon [00:21:27]:
And there’s little songs to go with it, too, on YouTube. So for all the parents, new city.
Amanda Levy [00:21:33]:
Catechism, we’ll put it in the show notes.
Rebecca Cannon [00:21:35]:
New city catechism for kids. You can go on YouTube and. Yeah, like the question, let’s see, what was it? Last week’s questions is, what is God?
Amanda Levy [00:21:44]:
So is this like a weekly thing that they’ve released?
Rebecca Cannon [00:21:47]:
Yeah, well, no, it’s a little book.
Amanda Levy [00:21:49]:
Okay.
Rebecca Cannon [00:21:49]:
Yeah. So we’re planning to just as many nights a week as we can to do a question answer and sing the little song.
Amanda Levy [00:22:00]:
Okay.
Rebecca Cannon [00:22:00]:
So last week we were doing the question, what is God? And the answer is. The answer is, God is the creator of everyone and everything. We sing. God’s the creator of everyone and everything. It’s a cute little song. Yeah. And so I’d say all that to say, the kids at this age, they can learn a lot. I just want to help us at First Baptist recognize how much they’re capable of and teach them as much as we can.
Rebecca Cannon [00:22:34]:
And also, I recognize that to be able to go to the gathering of the church without them is a huge blessing sometimes for how much I’m able to take in from the preaching of the word and everything like that. And also, I feel like I’m rambling now. But another goal is I want to prepare these little children to be ready to sit in worship as soon as possible, to sit with the church and to see their parents.
Amanda Levy [00:23:08]:
Well, to participate. Not even just see them, but to participate.
Rebecca Cannon [00:23:12]:
The goal is that they would trust in Christ as their savior and participate as soon as possible. But even as a part of coming to know the Lord, to have enough endurance and discipline to sit with their parents in church, to be ready. I know we encourage that here at First Baptist, at a pretty young age, for kids to sit with their parents. So as much as we can do in preschool ministry to support them, yeah, just teach them to sit and listen, and that it’s exciting to listen to God’s word and to sing praises to him. That’s exciting to me. And also another thing I’m excited about. You’re excited for a lot of reasons. I also just really enjoy thinking through what is the most efficient way to schedule volunteers, find such part of the job.
Rebecca Cannon [00:24:11]:
And to be honest, I think as much as possible, I want to put that in the hands of the members of our church to care for each other and not a staff person. The Bible does not say that your church should have a preschool ministry director. It says you should serve one another, meet each other’s needs, just to how to help people do that and just make it a good system to make it easy to do that. Yeah, I’m excited. There’s lots of things that are exciting to me.
Amanda Levy [00:24:45]:
That’s great. It’s good to be in this place of excitement.
Rebecca Cannon [00:24:47]:
Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:24:48]:
I feel like one thing that makes our conversation a little different than others is because you’re kind of on this, the very beginning of a new journey and a new season, whereas I feel like a lot of people so far are either, like, square in the middle of a season or near the tail end of a season. So I think it’s cool to have the fresh eyes of, like, there’s so much honeymoon phase. Well, yeah, there is a little bit of that, but, yeah, I think it’s good. What advice or encouragement would you have for someone who’s trying to discern what God might be calling them to do, whether that’s in the mystical sense of, like, it has to be this ministry position or just in general.
Rebecca Cannon [00:25:27]:
Yeah. Going back to the subject of calling to someone who’s trying to discern what God is calling them to, like, what.
Amanda Levy [00:25:37]:
I don’t know what I want to do in my life.
Rebecca Cannon [00:25:39]:
Yeah, I think the first. Our pastor in Louisville while Taylor was in seminary, he did an awesome sermon about just God’s will. And the first thing you should do is just obey. You know, in my role, I think of the commands to use your gifts for the building up of the body. So if you are a part of a church, if you’re a Christian, you’re commanded to be a part of a church. If you’re a part of a church, you’re commanded to serve the church in some way. And we’re all have different abilities and strengths and time and everything. So start by obeying his commands.
Rebecca Cannon [00:26:25]:
Figure out what does your church need? Where do they need help? I think that’s a good place to start because God has called all of us to obey his word. So if you’re a Christian, you’re called to that. So there you go. There’s your calling. I think that’s a good way to start figuring out. You just start trying things, meeting needs, and do you enjoy it? Do you feel like God has given you a passion for it? And do your circumstances allow for it? That was another thing I really appreciated from that sermon in Louisville. He was like, listen, if you’re 40 and you have however many kids and a mortgage, God’s will, the options of what God might be calling you to are more limited. It just doesn’t make sense for you.
Rebecca Cannon [00:27:24]:
To just hop on a plane wherever and go. And maybe God does want you to move your family, but it’s just God has put you where you are intentionally. So that’s part of it too. What are the needs around in your church, primarily in your community? What do you want to do and what do your circumstances allow for? And what do other people, what do your brothers and sisters at your church, what do they think you’re good at? That’s another thing.
Amanda Levy [00:28:01]:
Yeah, so I like that. And I think piggybacking off of it, if you’re listening to this and you’re more than likely attend First Baptist in Melbourne or a member here, there are a lot of opportunities to get involved in serving shameless plug. And so if you are sitting there and you don’t know where to look or even where to start, a great place is our website. So on our website, on the homepage, just scroll down a little bit and there’s a little block that says, find out where to serve. Or like find a place to serve. Click on that, try something. And if it’s not a good fit, try something else. But there’s so many needs.
Amanda Levy [00:28:37]:
I think sometimes in a large church it’s easy to buy into this lie that like, oh, they’ve got it all covered. They don’t need me because everyone else is already filling the spots. That’s not true. We do need a lot of people to get involved in serving the body. So I like that. It’s cool.
Rebecca Cannon [00:28:54]:
Thanks.
Amanda Levy [00:28:56]:
Okay, finally, what advice or encouragement would you have for someone who’s feeling the call to make disciples here and everywhere for the glory of God?
Rebecca Cannon [00:29:06]:
Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:29:09]:
I know. It feels like the same question.
Rebecca Cannon [00:29:11]:
I was going to say like advice other than they should volunteer in preschool.
Amanda Levy [00:29:15]:
That’s a good.
Rebecca Cannon [00:29:17]:
No, but seriously, again, like I said, I have little ones and so this is just a big part of my life. And I’ve been challenged with if you can communicate this amazing, big supernatural truth to children. Yeah, then that’s good. You probably have understood it well yourself. And yeah, it’s just a great thing to probably says something about you as a teacher, but we do here at our church, we have great curriculum, so you would not have to come up with things on your own. But yeah, why not start with the littlest ones? There is a need and yeah, they need to be pointed towards Christ as disciples. And what was the question again?
Amanda Levy [00:30:11]:
What advice or encouragement would you have for someone feeling the call to make disciples here and everywhere for the glory of God?
Rebecca Cannon [00:30:17]:
Yeah. Volunteering preschool ministry again, I feel like it’s similar to what I was saying before. Just meet the needs of your church because that is something that God has called all of us to do and it’s a great place to start.
Amanda Levy [00:30:39]:
All jokes aside about volunteering in preschool ministry, I do think there’s something to be said about figuring out how to teach little ones. It sorts things in your brain. Someone gave us the advice about something in our parenting journey with one of our kids of like, if you can start talking about this early and often, it just makes it you so much better of a communicator talking about it later on when they’re starting to remember it more. And so if that applies there, the practice that would come with teaching a two year old a Bible story and yeah, they’re a sponge and they’re going to remember it, but they’re not also coming to you with these huge problems. So it’s a great place to get connected in the practice. The call it is.
Rebecca Cannon [00:31:21]:
Yeah. In some ways it’s much simpler. If you’re nervous about teaching or something, then I say they’re a sponge.
Amanda Levy [00:31:30]:
But they’re also, they’re very forgiving.
Rebecca Cannon [00:31:32]:
Yeah. They’re really like, in one sense they’re a sponge. In another sense, they’re not going to remember if you mess up or stutter or anything like that. And so it is a great place to just challenge yourself to teach in front of other people. And it’s great practice doing things for the glory of God and not the praise of men.
Amanda Levy [00:31:53]:
Yes.
Rebecca Cannon [00:31:54]:
Because they’re not very good at saying thank you.
Amanda Levy [00:31:56]:
They aren’t. They can be the sweetest and the most sour within a flip of a.
Rebecca Cannon [00:32:02]:
So true. And yeah, so it’s know, in some ways you don’t do it for them to think like, oh, Mr. Rebecca’s an awesome Sunday school teacher.
Amanda Levy [00:32:15]:
They’re probably not going to articulate that as a three or a three year old. What my three year old can articulate is yesterday we were at Wednesday night supper and she pointed across the room and she said, that’s my teacher. And you’re like, do you like her? Yeah, she’s great.
Rebecca Cannon [00:32:30]:
Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:32:30]:
I mean, what more could you ask for?
Rebecca Cannon [00:32:33]:
Yeah. Who doesn’t want that? And all it takes is you just being there and loving them and showing your best consistently teach this lesson.
Amanda Levy [00:32:44]:
Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me.
Rebecca Cannon [00:32:49]:
Thank you.
Amanda Levy [00:32:49]:
I know it was intimidating. I believe this is our first video episode.
Rebecca Cannon [00:32:54]:
Yeah.
Amanda Levy [00:32:54]:
And so both of us were a little bit intimidated, so be gracious to us.
Rebecca Cannon [00:32:59]:
But if we look funny, just, we don’t do this often.
Amanda Levy [00:33:04]:
We’ll get there. Practice, I think that’s another takeaway. Just start doing something. And the practice that comes with doing something goes a long way.
Rebecca Cannon [00:33:12]:
Yeah, teaching God’s word, it takes practice just like anything else.
Amanda Levy [00:33:19]:
Well, thank you.
Rebecca Cannon [00:33:21]:
Like being on a video podcast.
Amanda Levy [00:33:25]:
Thanks for joining me.
Rebecca Cannon [00:33:27]:
Thanks.
Amanda Levy [00:33:28]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Mission Control. If you’re interested in learning more about launch Ten X and the different ways to get involved in what God is doing here at First Baptist Melbourne, a great place to start would be visiting our website, Launchme church.