A Thought about Sunday School

[Dave Roberts]

How do you respond to this for your church?

[Sandy]

Whatever happened to worker training?

I was fortunate, as I was growing up, to be in a church where Sunday School was the primary focus of the discipleship ministry, and the adults who worked in it were committed to it. It was the backbone of the congregation. When I went off to college, and was in the basic Old and New Testament history courses, with the obligatory H.I. Hester blue and maroon covered texts, my roommate, and hall-mates in the dorm noticed that I was getting A's on the ten point quizzes that began every class period. I give the credit for those good grades to having been in Sunday School just about every Sunday from the time I can remember.

[Mrs Haruo]

Most of the churches I have attended in the various places I have lived have not had a problem with late teachers that I know of. The Sunday School teachers took their jobs seriously and usually arrived ahead of time knowing their material. I think the idea of knowing there would breakfast at church would be something that would be an attractive feature, it's nice to get to know each other better over a cup of juice and a little toast and eggs or a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee.

[Haruo]

I don't know, dear. Coffee and donuts aren't very doctrinal, and bacon is right up there with being gay according to Third Moses.

I don't recall a problem with late or unengaged SS teachers, but then (a) I have done very little Sunday School since I was a kid and (b) I do recall some whose grasp of the material was deficient. In particular, I remember a lesson series in high school which focused on "What's wrong with all these cults and other religions", where the teacher in all seriousness debunked Catholicism on the grounds that "they claim that the pope is a direct descendant of Simon Peter, but Peter was Jewish and the pope is Italian".

[Sandy]

Having taught a Sunday School class for many years, I don't recall ever being late. In fact, because of the regular, weekly Workers' meeting on Wednesday night, I was always there early, always called the entire enrollment list every week, took prayer requests, made hospital calls and home visits, and had the room ready before they walked in on Sunday morning. We always had juice, donuts, and fruit and about fifteen minutes of fellowship before the class started. It became especially important when I started teaching senior adults, 70+, in 2005. Their class had an opening assembly, and a regular program like clockwork. They followed the lesson outline in the quarterly, because most of them read and studied it before class. Tough crowd with high expectations.

[Dave Roberts]

The worst thing to experience in a church is children's workers or youth workers who are chronically late. Some parents automatically stay and cover for the late teachers. That sends a message that the children are not really that important. I'm afraid that increasingly the Bible study on which many of us grew up has been diminished and undercut because so little attention is paid to the training and support of workers. With reduced numbers of Christian educators on church staffs, there are more gaps in how the work is being done.

[Tim Bonney]

I don't find that Sunday School is reading adults, particularly younger adults. We still have an adult Bible Study on Sunday morning but we have small group studies going all through the week and are organizing more. We just hired a Minister of Small Group Ministries who started this month to better structure our small group program. I've been thinking for a years that Sunday Schools for adults is an old program that has seen its day in many places.

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

Sandy,

Part of it is cultural here. In the northern midwest and further west "Sunday school" is viewed as a kids program. We are ditching the name "Sunday School" for adults for "Adult Bible Study." Mainline churches have never had the level of Sunday School participation that I saw among Southern Baptists. When I was in the SBC 80% of worshippers went to Sunday School. I've never been in an ABC church that had more than 50% of worshippers. In the UMC I've never seen more than 30%-40% and the more you get into Lutheran and Catholic country the lower the percentage I see.

We have one adult class on Sunday morning that runs about 20 and we have in worship on the weekend about 260. We have several types of studies going on during the week and are adding several more Bible studies and small groups this fall and several more in the spring. So keying small groups to the one Adult Sunday class isn't useful to us.

I remind myself that early Methodists were largley societies of small groups with circuit riders coming in occasionally for preaching and the sacraments. Then when the Sunday School movement came along in the 1800s Methodists jumped on that band wagon and dumped what were basically deep level accountability groups for the standard Sunday School class fair. IMHO, and in the opinion of many Methodists with a lot more hash marks than me, we should have stuck to our original society method because it was more effect for Methodists.

I'd rather see numerous Bible studies and groups on differing days of the week than put our eggs into the basket of one hour on Sunday morning when it hasn't been that popular for more than a generation here.

[Dave Roberts]

I see a number of different models. Some mainline churches stop Sunday School altogether in the summer. Others have it only for children but don't have the adult component in the summer. In other churches, it has become the premier small group study, but the other issue that goes with that is the capacity of groups to remain open groups. Most say they are, but in truth they are not. Actually, if you go back to the 1940's and 1950's, Sunday School attendance in the SBC often exceeded worship attendance. Also, anywhere you went, the churches were all studying the same lessons. It was quite a different world for everyone.

[Mrs Haruo]

I know of one church in our association that is rather small, and has no Sunday School program at all. Few of the active members still live in the neighborhood, and when a new pastor tried to get a Sunday morning class going before church, it didn't last long because few wanted to get up early enough to make the class. There had been a thriving Sunday school class program in years past, but that was when it was a much larger church. Now it is primarily older adults. The midweek Bible study is well attended however.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

[Haruo]

[Tim Bonney]

[Tim Bonney]

Ed, certainly I agree that part of the problem is that adults don't know what they don't know.

But Sunday School is just a program. It has been in existence for so long in so many churches that some churches can't imagine doing discipleship any other way. But a lot of churches are moving to a small group ministry model where Adult study is doing throughout the week and not primarily on Sunday. There is just no compelling reason for the majority of adult Bible study to be on Sunday if that isn't what gets the most participation by adults. For some churches Sunday morning adult Sunday school is an old program that has run its course like SBC Training Union. It used to work, now it doesn't, so you do something else.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

It's been my experience that if "Sunday School" is done right, it will reach adults as well as children and youth. And it doesn't have to be "either or," it can be "both and more" when it comes to using small groups as part of a church's discipleship ministry. I've been involved in a situation where the Sunday School classes were "connected" to a small group, with some overlap in attendance, i.e. some of the Sunday School class attended small group, but in both groups there were adults who were only involved in one or the other. Small groups can shrivel and die, too, if they're not ministering and meeting needs. Essentially, an expository, application type Bible study was the core of both, with the weeknight small group time allowing for worship and fellowship as well. Basically, you have a church that learns to "be" the church instead of church being something that is "attended," and you have a congregation that meets at different locations on different days of the week for discipleship, ministry and worship. I think that's a good, Biblical model.

If your Sunday morning "Sunday School" classes have leadership that is taught to use their spiritual gifts, and turned loose to use them, they will, and your Sunday School will be a viable discipleship ministry that will reach people.

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

Sandy, thanks for your post just above Tim's. I could like to hear more of what you mean by "if "Sunday School" is done right, it will reach adults as well as children and youth". I agree with that statement in general but the "If" makes me a bit nervous. If it is done right means different things to different people, and as I suggested to often that boils down to "If it is done my way". I agree with both you and Tim (I think) if you are saying that one hour on Sunday morning is a minimalist starting point.