The Memory Makers are, in my opinion, the biggest waste.  Our kids just do not need one more "happy meal toy" to wind up in the garbage.  And most of them are too juvenile for the 4th and 5th graders anyway.  If folks absolutely want to have some sort of promotional give-away item, why not do iron-on transfers?  The kids could do shirts, pillowcases, etc. and I have to believe that'd be far cheaper and easier for group than coming up with all those little mctoys.

Instead of having a separate DVD and CD, could you do just one CD-Rom that would play in the TV and also in the CD player?  And as much as I love the music, there's so much of it that we never get to it all.  My kids prefer to choose 2-3 songs from each module and really learn them well.  I'd be happy with one really good song set per quarter, instead of one per module.

Amy in Ohio

Things we don't use on the DVD -- the countdowns, bible verse motions and question screens.  We don't use any of those at all.

We like the Jumpstarts but I only use them 1-2 times per month and it wouldn't be the end of the world to lose them although the kids like them.

The music -- I have had mixed results with the music.  The kids still like "Living Inside Out" and like the songs from past VBS's but some of the other songs are a bit boring for them. 

We would also probably welcome longer themes.  I don't have time to re-decorate every month.  If the visual themes lasted two or three months it would make things much more worthwhile for us and might perhaps save some graphic design time on group's end.  I wouldn't mind the theme verses and topic (i.e. giving, salvation, holy spirit) going just one month. 

While I love the idea of the memory makers, I'm not sure they caught on and are making as much of an impact as the vbs bible buddies do.  Of course, I do think too much of a good thing can be detrimental.  I would be ok doing without those and replacing that activity with something else.

I sure have been searching for other curriculum and it just continues to frustrate me that LIO won't be available.  It wasn't working super well for our largest preschool class but for our elementary levels in our largest class hour and "all ages in one room" class hour it has been fantastic.

My big suggestion for Group is work around the price, I was always putting LIO away because of the price, but when I finally understood how worked, I loved and I know that lots of people are scared to pay $300 for 3 months worthy of SS. But, they need to see the benefits... and that all the lessons can be duplicate, since we have more activities that you can fit in our time schedule, how about using it lesson for 2 Sundays, the kids would have more repetion and they could really live it, not talking about the little things we don't use, and the music could really be learned!

Mark, my apologies that you weren't told we have 12 modules. We sent out a letter in early March, and if you ordered through Group you should have received that letter. But I wonder with you just starting in March, if we pulled our list of who to get the letter to before your purchase? Either way, we've been working with our phone team to let people know we have 12 modules. If you have other wording to suggest, we're certainly open to it.

Thanks all, too, for your input on what is and is not critical in the program. It's something we'll keep in mind. We want to offer an easy-to-do program, but if you feel it is still easy without things like questions on the screen, that is something we can certainly consider.

And Denise, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what helped you 'get it' and get past the price. Again, if there were key words that helped you, those words may help others as well. That's part of why we started selling each module individually, too, so people could try it out.

Keep sharing your ideas! And we'll keep working on getting the word out about Living Inside Out to more churches so that we can get production started up again.

God bless you and your ministries.

Deb Bernard

Curriculum Senior Marketing Manager

I, too, am upset with the decision to cancel LIO.  I think I know one major drawback--you marketed this primarily as a Sunday School curriculum.  IT'S NOT!!!  Yes, it would be great for SS but it is SO much more than that!  We use it for our Wednesday night program and WE LOVE IT!!!  We used FWF (FaithWeaver Friends) for years but wanted to "get with the times" with a Large Group/Small Group format.  I think that if you market it as the "anytime" curriculum sales might perk up!

We were one of the "beginning" churches who started with LIO!  One of the things that I do is that I don't even look at the preschool, lower elementary, and upper elementary books.  I get Amy from Group to email me those so I can print them to our main copier straight from my computer.  This make a MUCH better copy (especially with some of the graphics).  But, even if you aren't networked to your main copier--you could print 1 "master" and take it to the copier.  MUCH cheaper than printing books!  I like the format for the large group as it is but you could email this to us also and we could print it too!

I, for one, LOVE LIO as it is.  My kids LOVE the memory makers and this is a HUGE incentive to them (I require they attend 3 out of 4 weeks to get it)!  Attendance has grown!!!!  I could do without the on screen questions also.  I use them BUT if those were printed out on 1 page for the night and I could run off a copy for each of my "crew" leaders--that would work fine too!  I don't use the countdowns or jumpstarts very often--just because of time constraints!

LIO is AWESOME!  Because we don't have Wednesday children's programs (we do different things) during the summer, I do have 3 modules still left to play with BUT I can't see starting in the fall with LIO and then having to switch to something else.  Group just lost my Wednesday night business!

As someone else said, large group/small group curriculum is where children's ministry is headed and it is sad to see (in my opinion) the BEST PUBLISHER not jump on board!

I pray that these boards will be shown to Thom, Joani, and others to see that the "bottom line" is not always the most important thing--changing and touching the lives of children and helping them grow to be disciples of Jesus Christ is!!!!  And that is exactly what Living Inside Out is doing at our church!

I had our rep send me SS samples from all the other programs.  I spent over an hour today going through them and then talking with the rep on the phone.  I am SO frustrated!  There is nothing that even begins to compare -- it's all apples and oranges.  One curriculum pretty much requires that we use Group's Hands On Bibles.  Love those -- but our church has invested hundreds of dollars in NIRV Adventure Bibles, so that curriculum is out.  Another curriculum has student books.  HELLO!  This is the 21st century!  And our erratic attendance makes that cost prohibitive anyway.  We wound up throwing away a truckload of extra books and misc. pages when we finished using the last outdated curriculum that was set up that way.  Then there was another curriculum that had different learning centers.  We simply do not have the resources to pull that off.  One required so much prep time and materials gathering that it made my head hurt just reading it!

My rep's suggestion was to piece something together to resemble LIO using parts of Faithweaver and Faithweaver Friends.  Yeah -- it would work.  But it was so confusing and required me to order so many different manuals . . . the opening celebration from FWF, the age-level stuff from FW for the second half, and the music DVD from Kids Own Worship.  This thing would need its own materials manager!  We'd never be able to keep that all straight.  We don't have anyone who's "in charge" of SS materials and we have a hard enough time just recruiting teachers, so having someone be in charge of all the books and ordering is out.

I'll be ordering samples from other publishers.  I hate to do it, but I don't see that we have a choice.  I hate this.  It took me a long time to get my church into Group's Sunday School curriculum.  Now that we have to make our second change in a year, I'll probably never convince them to do it again.  This was a huge leap of faith for a lot of folks on my Christian Ed. committee . . . and it didn't pay off.

Amy in Ohio

I do use at least a countdown every Sunday to be the attention-getter, and move right in to the theme song. My favorite so far is the penguins and the "celebrity" one on Rescue 911.

The jumpstarts are OK some