THE POWER OF PROPS: Life Lessons for any Gathering

By Tim Dingus

Props have teaching power! I’ve witnessed the “light bulbs of understanding” instantly switch on when visual aids are implemented. Long-term retention will spike as you influence a group with a meaningful prop. The formula works the same for teachers, docents, managers, clergy, youth leaders, motivational speakers, wedding toasts, employers, and keynotes. Here are more than fifty lessons with recommended props but remember to find a way to make it your own!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646548347

Book preview

Off The Top of Your Head

What Everyone Sees

Your altar or stage will be filled with a huge variety of hats and caps—from a sombrero to a Green Bay Packers cheese wedge hat, from a university knit-stocking cap to the extremely unique Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series cap.

The Big Question

What would you like to be known for? For good or bad, you often are quickly judged based on what you are wearing. And likewise, you form a first impression of those around you based on a brief glance. A person’s job, where they are from, social class evaluation, on a farm or in the city…all without a spoken word and within five seconds.

Most of us just happen to appear a certain way. Others really work hard to establish a look to fit a specific lifestyle or impression. Whether for a status or part of the courting ritual, it’s out there for all the world to see. We don’t necessarily need or want feedback.

Take a quick look in your closet and tally the variety of your hats. Professional sports, schools, military, nonprofits and causes, once-in-a-lifetime event, vacations, place of work, music artists, fashion brands, and so much more…all within one person. Are some outdated? Not that they are simply old, but they just don’t pertain to you any longer. Does that singular hat fall into the category of not politically correct? Sometimes that trucker’s cap just doesn’t wear well or could be uncomfortably out of style. Within seconds, most people could give you a reason why those items remain at the back of the closet.

What to Make of It

Now let’s focus on the reasons for wearing the hat that may not currently exist in your wardrobe. This soon-to-be list may never need an actual physical hat hanging on your hook. How many folks come to mind as kind people and you’ve never seen them wear a hat or anything spelling it out? How about helpful, volunteer, funny, charitable, leader, parent, mentor, rich, faithful, famous, struggling, successful, grieving, hungry, happy, depressed, under stress, or lonely? You’ll soon see the ease or difficulty of accomplishing or hiding your list.

Oddly enough, the hats you wear will most definitely change based on the room you walk into and the anticipated audience. Imagine the shift walking into a church service versus a concert. Knowing everyone in the room versus knowing absolutely no one. Throughout the day, can you change hats as quickly as demanded of you? Should you do it solely based on how you perceive the circumstances? Or are the playing field’s differences irrelevant to you as a player entering the arena?

A Little Something Extra

An insert into the bulletins could include multiple art template of blank baseball caps. You may encourage everyone to write in what they would like to be known for in the future. Often, the act of putting it in writing is the first step to making it happen.

Ways To Make It Your Own

So You’d Like to Be a Volunteer

What Everyone Sees

A table containing large and small rocks, safety goggles, and a hefty hammer at the side.

The Big Question

How does one group get and retain volunteers so much more successfully than other groups? Regardless of the work needing to be done, regardless of the hours needing to complete the task, regardless of the environment, regardless of how many hands are needed to efficiently handle the job.

Nine times out ten, it’s the pay given to the volunteers. Those wishing to help may never actually say, What’s in it for me? But down deep, it matters. It could be a universally tough and undesirable job, and yet if a volunteer simply wants to fill an afternoon’s time, the match is good. As a leader, you should be able to easily make a list of the pay your database of volunteers may be looking for from your group. Fellowship, worth, giving of expertise, time occupier, drawing attention to their talents, fulfill an obligation for school credit, and/or a way to spend time with like-minded people or friends.

Seeking out to address and satisfy these needs are much easier challenges to a leader. Imagine trying to convince someone to eat something they truly hate based on past experience, current smell, or menu price. The need is only on your side, and there’s nothing for them in the deal. You may stand a chance if you spin it around to sell it on the healthy pedestal; it’s free, or it’s come a long way in twenty years.

What to Make of This

If a lone volunteer was asked to bust up an isolated large rock into small ones by themselves, the job may still get done, but not joyfully. If their true reason for being there was fellowship and not getting the job done, they may never volunteer for anything ever again.

Maybe asking, directly or indirectly, the personal desires of your potential volunteers is a good first step—a personal conversation or a questionnaire form. Please don’t assume. Just because a guy is a great carpenter by day does not necessarily mean he is willing to do his profession after five o’clock or on the weekends.

Connecting the dots on the needs and the wants on both sides of the fence is the key.

A Little Something Extra

Enter these personal characteristics into a database so the next volunteer recruiter will not have to reinvent the wheel.

Ways To Make It Your Own

The Power of a Thank-You

What Everyone Sees

A bouquet of flowers, a dozen cookies, a stamp, note card, envelope, and pen.

The Big Question

How much would you pay for a really nice gift or an hour of volunteer work? The gift could be the result of a wedding reception, graduation ceremony, receiving the Boy Scout Eagle achievement award, or offering an idea to kick-start a career. It seems a little backward at first. If you take the timing element out of the equation, it will make more sense.

Ask yourself this simple question. Would you spend no more than one minute to write a note of thanks and a postage stamp in order to reap the benefits of a $50 gift card from your aunt Brenda? Of course, you would! Then why on God’s green earth would you not consider doing the same well after you’ve received and cashed in that gift card to feed your face at your favorite restaurant? That’s right. Aunt Brenda knew your favorite local place to eat even though she lives halfway across the country. Somehow, she still nailed it. Not only is it proper to thank everyone for their generosity, but it lays the groundwork for future acts of kindness.

It’s up to you to evaluate the degree of thanks a person deserves. A dozen roses traditionally shows up on the desks of wives as a loving thank-you for yet another year of marriage. It’s funny how an annual delivery of overpriced flowers by a stranger seems to single-handedly sum up a year’s worth of deserved thank-yous and I love yous. Of course, just because it works for so many doesn’t make it right 100 percent of the time.

What to Make of It

Thank-yous can appear in so many ways. With today’s technology, the easy and less memorable way will come as a text, e-mail, or post. Does it reflect the effort put into the gift giving? Well, that’s up to you. I’ve unfortunately been in the middle of someone wanting me to thank my son for something he did for them. I don’t suppose I’ll ever become an agent of thanks. I solved the issue by offering up my son’s phone number and mailing address and emphasizing that it always means more coming from the origin.

A Little Something Extra

Maybe it’s possible to make use of your other talents. Your drawings, photographs, poems, or meme creations can be easily turned into custom thank-you note cards or postcards and much more economically than the price of retail cards.

Ways To Make It Your Own

The True Meaning of a Baseball

What Everyone Sees

A baseball, helmet, glove, and bat.

The Big Question

Two people walk onto a fleshly mowed lawn, only to see a single baseball in the distance. One person has no idea what it is, and the other person knows little or nothing about the game of baseball. If they were asked to describe it, where would either of them begin?

It’s white. The purest of pure. Without sin. Fresh until scuffed.

The absence of color recognition. No boundaries. Everyone is welcome to receive it.

It’s held together by two hundred and sixteen red stitches.

They are raised so virtually anyone can more easily hold it. Your ability is immaterial.

They appear to