It’s time to tackle one of my favorite issues, let’s talk Sunday School. In many places it’s dying on the vine, it’s being traded in and swapped out. It’s considered out of date and it’s not working. I’m here to tell you that Sunday School can be powerful, effective, life changing, church reviving and Christ honoring and will become your favorite time of the week. One of the problems is we are stuck on this idea of Sunday School being something it’s not. Today I want to talk about the “D” word. Let’s dive into the deep of deep.
So you want a deep Sunday School huh. The whole open group thing doesn’t appeal to you because you are worried about having to “water it down”. You don’t want to teach the boring stuff, you want to have deep teaching. Let’s stop for a minute, I don’t have any idea what “deep” even means. What are you teaching that’s so deep? Hebrew poetry structures? Are you examining the Hebrew Lexicon and searching for possible meanings for Selah? Examining every Old Testament prophecy and cross referencing historical and current events? Are you doing a historical look at I and II Maccabees? (One more). Are you trying to do a new translation from the oldest available Hebrew text? What is a deep class? I know what I have seen, most of the time when a teacher, leader or guru wants to go deep, he or she has a pet project or a personal agenda they want to teach. Put the rocks down, I didn’t say you do, just saying that is what I’ve seen. Don’t get so touchy, it’s like I hit a nerve. PUT THE ROCKS DOWN.
Ok, now that we are past the desire for bloodshed (I hope) let’s talk about what you should be teaching. You need to be looking at Old Testament books and examining how God is revealing Himself and what we learn about God, His character and His attributes from His revelations. You need to look at the law to see what is teaches us about ourselves, how unable to actually be holy we really are. You need to teach the wisdom of the Old Testament and the skills for living that are explained. You need to show people Christ in the Old Testament and how He is in every story and proclaimed through the entire redemptive history. Teach the principles of what God is showing us in the Old Testament, but do so without teaching legalism, and remind those in your class who aren’t Jewish that we aren’t Jewish, so don’t try to keep the law like a Jew. There isn’t a temple, it doesn’t work. (You think I’m joking, but I’m a serious as a teetotaler at a brewery with RC Sproul.)
You need to teach them Jesus. You need to teach the Doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement. . . but don’t call it that. Just tell em Jesus died in your place so you can be justified before the Father. Yes, use words like Justified, Sanctified and Glorified, just define them. Also define Born Again, Gentile, Epistle, Propitiation and anything else that brings a confused look to someone’s face. Remember, we are growing through Sunday School, so there should be new people in your class. Teach them the hard stuff, but make it so they can learn it.
Talk about stuff that matters to them. Talk about death and eternity, about marriage and divorce and sex and kids and drinking if you can survive the conversation. Talk about abortion, elections, Election, the 2nd coming and talk about then using scripture. Talk about stuff in the Bible, and a great way is to talk about it while it comes up while teaching the Bible. Use material to help you. I know, I know, you all hate curriculum, you can write better stuff than the guys who write this stuff for a living. Can I be harsh? Get over yourself and go buy The Gospel Project, or something else. Lifeway has great stuff, and their Thru the Bible is perfect for many of you. Just get it. Ok, go to the website and try a sample. Do it.
Ok, last thing. Teach your people to be transformed. Let me break it down this way, teach them like you assume your teaching will change their lives. Teach them how to study the Bible, teach them that life lessons that will save their lives are in the scripture. Teach them the whole thing is important, not just the part about dragons spewing rivers or wives submitting. Teach them about context, exegesis, isogesis and why it’s bad and why you never, ever do it. You don’t do it, right? Ok, good. Teach them about translations, the different translation philosophies and why they shouldn’t use the new NIV of the TNIV, and of course to avoid the New World Translation. Teach them about worship, prayer, fasting, studying and reading and quite times and such. Talk about outreach and evangelism (cause we are growing, remember) and make your class a safe, happy and fun place to bring people. This will require you to have some fun and be a little social. Bring coffee and maybe donuts. One class I worked with had chocolate covered bacon, and their class grew. Just saying, couldn’t hurt. Find good resources, bring good resources, share good resources. Teach your people to be Biblically literate, have a Biblical world view and to become teachers themselves when the class is too big and you need to have two classes. Teach them so they can become leaders, deacons, pastors and of course bloggers.
Now, do all this, allowing for time for fellowship, prayer, and be open to new folks and teach in such a way that new people are learning, engaged and feel open? Overwhelmed? It’s a big task, but Sunday School is amazing when you are open, caring, loving and you engage people with the power of the Word. Is it deep? I don’t know, I think sometimes we go deep enough to bury our class while it’s still living. Stop being deep, just be real and teach what matters. Teach with passion and love and excitement and then invite people to come and teach them stuff that will change their lives. If I can do it, you can do it (and I’ve done it with Middle School boys, so I know you can). Good luck, you’ll have a great and amazing time. Thanks for not stoning me.
All I can say, is DUDE!!!
So, what do we do with all of these rocks now? Somebody need a fireplace built?
I would offer that it’s more than just this: “Use material to help you. I know, I know, you all hate curriculum, you can write better stuff than the guys who write this stuff for a living.” It takes me more than three hours to prepare a decent lesson from a pre-written one. And that’s arguably just ‘decent’. Any less and it’s arguably ‘indecent’. And now how do you support class members who actually desire to study in advance? Even with a prepared curriculum shared by the entire Young Adult department at Great Hills by the minster for that group… Read more »
Dan, Good stuff. It is tough to do everything you said but it is a smorgasbord of ideas to pick and choose for starting up. Two (2) things I would definitely like to see is the pastor working with a select few and sending them out to begin groups and so on. Secondly, have a night set aside to simply pray with the men. The greatest teacher is simply the hit and miss experience as we mature in Christ. Occasionally, our Sunday School would merge two classes and set a topic. The teachers would team teach and it had a… Read more »
Being semiretired now, I have occasion to attend SS as a member not a teacher (as pastor I always had a class and taught deep stuff, or at least stuff that I thought interesting) and find it somewhat tedious. The fellowship is rich, the class is a caring class but it’s a talking head lecture. I’m not sure if there is a lot of learning going on althought the teacher is conscientious and generally well prepared. I think you are on target with your assessment of what passes for deep – hobby horse stuff mixed with an supposedly, and intentionally,… Read more »
i-so-GE-sis, n., teaching the bible as if your one hobby horse had equal presence in every verse. From Greek “iso” same + “ege” to lead.
Good post!
same as ‘eisegesis’ ?
Not quite the same, just poking fun at the typo. iso=same, eis=into.
We just pick a book in the Bible and start at the beginning and go from there, verse by verse. Its easy and deep at the same time. Tons of supplementary materials.
I’m using the Gospel Project material and like it. Mainly because you can’t just take the material and teach it. You have to prepare your own lesson to teach, and frankly I need to do that.
I enjoy just reading and teaching a book from scripture, but I think SS should be structured to take folks from somewhere to somewhere. TGP seems to be doing that.
But I’m very aware that we’re not teaching material; we’re teaching the Bible.
For the past 3 to 4 years I have been teaching a Sunday School class of a group of median adults at the church where I and my wife are members. For a little more than a year we have been going through The Gospel Project. Average attendance is 15 to 20. We sit in a circle and the format is very participative. While a missionary in Spain, I have led various small groups, from more traditional Sunday School to home cell groups to small group discipleship groups. As I see it, there is a time and a place for… Read more »
David, your point is well taken and I thoroughly enjoy home groups, but for many of us who pastor churches in urban areas this is impractical. Namely, because we have children (and teens) who come without their parents, who we pick up in our church van, or who simply walk over to the church. These children/teens need Sunday School (or call it whatever you want) in order to teach them and present to them the gospel. Now, some may say, why don’t you simply have “children’s church” during worship, but then our people wouldn’t be able to come to worship.… Read more »
Nate,
Yes, I agree you must adjust your strategy to your context. As I said above: “The important thing is that in the schedule of activities of a church all the key areas of church life are adequately covered: worship, teaching, evangelism, service, and fellowship.”
David, wasn’t disagreeing with you, just adding to your insights. Probably didn’t come across that way.
Sometimes, in spite of Dave Miller’s protests to the contrary, an emoticon does help out. I wasn’t thinking you were disagreeing. And I was agreeing with you. In other words, we are all agreeing. 🙂
I disagree with you agreeing with him agreeing with you about your agreement with him.
And emoticons are still evil.
I have people in my classes who desire to build a Sukkah this Fall, not from legalism, but from excitement in the true point of the Torah…to learn more about their Messiah and because the book of Revelation is full of allusions to the Feasts that even a learned Christian would not notice. This is one key to unlocking this Hebraic book. Pet themes are not always bad…I think most people have a bent they are drawn to…engineers are drawn to the scientific patterns and measurements in scripture, accountants to numbers…linguists to the Hebrew and Greek. We all have a… Read more »
Pardon me, Dee, but your gnosticism is showing…
Dee I say this with all the love in my heart. Don’t teach that in Sunday School. Start a small group or a bible study. You might as well speak Hebrew. Anyone new will be totally lost. Do that stuff in a closed group.
Thank you for your concern. First, I met with the pastor twice who gave me 3 Wed services. I did have new people because they were excited and invited friends. I just reviewed a lot and passed out materials and people wanted to learn and stayed late asking questions.
Yep x 32
That’s not for Sunday School. That’s stuff to talk about occupying the time on a long trip home from an ACC Nation if you are an SEC Nation and your NATION lost and your starting QB got his passing arm broke ’cause it don’t matter anyhow ’cause you feel like you gonna die and you just don’t care.
I haven’t had any trouble teaching this and having people who are interested enough to bring their friends. I don’t recall much happening in church other than serving ice cream that brought visitors.
Dee,
Just wondering what resources you use in preparing your teachings. Do you depend totally on your own study or do you consult the works of other scholars and experts in the field? If you do consult other people, who are they? What are their credentials? Where have they studied? What are their current works?
Thank you for asking, though I know not to expect anyone to respect people who, while some have credentials, do not lean on traditional seminary credentials because seminaries do not teach this. Even in my Linguistics classes I went against the grain proclaiming that Paleo-Hebrew had to be the original language of the earth and not Proto-Indoeuropean…a completely made up language, by the way, that they teach at University! I had studied to transcribe an unwritten tribal language, create a grammar, teach them to read and write and at the same time translate the scripture for them and teach them… Read more »
Greg, you are either using a word you do not know the definition of or you are advocating throwing out all archeology and book learning. I have said nothing of this knowledge saving anyone. I am advocating salvation grace through faith not of works or knowledge. However, I believe ignorance is not bliss and no excuse for error. And when I teach I teach that doing is not for salvation but a way to learn hands on. Knowing who I am in Christ is the foundation. But when Jesus told us he was the Aleph and the Tav He said… Read more »
The gnostic part, though not totally accurate, is apt to the point that you often claim to have some sort of knowledge that makes your ideas clearer and better than those who do not have this knowledge.
I actually questioned my Hebrew professor Harry Hunt regarding whether there might be a pictographic element to a couple of glyphs in the Hebrew alephbet circa the fall of ’85 or the spring of ’86. I proposed that the specific glyph came with them from Egypt. He was able to demonstrate it was present in the ugaritic cuneiform. My brother Jason–a specialist in avionics software like myself but an arguably more detail-oriented person than I am (with degrees in electrical engineering from Tennesee Tech and computer science with a 4.0 from Arizona State–introduced me to the pictographic interpretation. I’m not… Read more »
You are assuming that SBC seminaries are known to teach only truth. I seem to recall they are fallible places which often were known to teach the bible was not inspired…
It seems to me they could have used some deeper understanding of the Hebrew in order to see how multilayered scripture is and therefore impossible not to be inspire.
You seem to assume that I’m not smart enough to learn around the subject matter I’m taught and that your position is actually an inspired by God view of how the Bible in constructed. I reject both assertions in their entirety. 😉
I don’t see how me having a different viewpoint than you makes one more or less smart than the other. I am saying that Hebrew as a language works this way. I am saying John repeatedly writes things that can only be understood in this way. Such as when he refers in John 1to the Word being God…I believe it confirms that he is saying the Word is the aleph tav and that the aleph tav is the Word and Jesus and God. Truth is spelled aleph mem tav which is the first middle and last letters so the scripture… Read more »
And by the way, I do not subscribe to anything that does not seem to be supported in the scriptures themselves as witnesses. Where number meanings are implied in scripture and confirmed in the New Testament teaching, I would make like analogies and take it no further. Jesus clearly is referring to this. Quarrel with Him. Dave, I don’t claim it superior …I claim it is urgent in these days when Christians do not know the difference between Allah and YHWH. Scripture testifies to itself and I am an avid excited disciple who asked you difficult questions years ago. I… Read more »
It is not uncommon for Greek students to vastly over-argue points from the Greek. Most things are determined by usage and context, not by secrets discovered in the text.
I had not discovered secrets in the text it was in the plain Greek. I determine usage of Greek terms by their use in the Septuagint and other places in the New Testament. I understand rules of translation. I always take the literal meaning in the most trusted manuscripts (of course a debatable issue) as the foundation. However, the Torah was the foundation for all word and phrase definitions because that is how these men were thinking. So the answers that I was given by a man I know was sincerely giving me his best answers really made no sense.… Read more »
This is always an interesting subject. With its immature history, the previous 230 years or so have yielded some good and bad outcomes with respect to “Sunday School”. I have come to see “Sunday School” as an attempt to return to the earliest of fellowship gatherings within the church just after Pentecost. Since preaching in America today is typically now defined as a man standing in front of a group of folks for an hour. Some hours more entertaining that others…. The invention of the “Sunday School” seems to have some appeal, although cyclical. It appears to me that the… Read more »
It’s interesting how our different experiences determine our perspectives. What Dan seems to be referring to as “deep” I would probably call “foolish.” Whereas what Dan is actually advocating for I would call “deep.” In case it’s not clear, I totally agree with Dan and am very thankful for this discussion. But it’s just reminding me how we have all seen good/deep teaching watered down or perverted into something that no longer drives us to know and follow Christ. So when I say “deep”… I’m talking about helping people see the depth of their depravity and how deep are the… Read more »
I am ALWAYS suspicious of people who claim to know more about Greek and Hebrew than people who gave their entire lives and fortunes to study the subjects.
So some person on the internet is going to tell us some new secrets that people like Keil and Delitzch missed?
Brilliant comment, Louis.
Why not? Remember some people get special direct revelation from god himself and that openess to the spirit obviously supercedes scripture.
Dee is not alone is suggesting she is one of them. Others on Voices have said they do too…..you questioning that? ;-). (I sure am)
We’re just haters though, obviously.
Tarheel,
If one doesn’t believe in God answering prayer, Naturally, they wouldn’t believe that God gives his ministers sermons.
I was shocked to find out that some of you don’t pray for a sermon, and we wonder why there is a decline in Baptisms in the SBC.
Oh brother.
Nothing supercedes Scripture…not seeing where you think you saw that in anything i said.
Let us throw out all archeological discoveries since the 1880`s to honor them.
Which ones are you talking about, Dee? Which archaeological discoveries have been made that lend support to your position? I’m asking for specifics here. Cite your sources and detail how they support your theory.
Dale, I answered. If you want to know my sources, you will apparently have to check with the moderator or contact me personally.
I hope this answers your question… I think the earliest archeological find of this Paleo Hebrew/Phoenician writing system was in 1855. Much more has been found in the 20th c. I think it is widely agreed it was used for writing the Torah and all Hebrew writing till the time of Ezra who adopted the current script upon return from the Babylonian captivity (Daniel was instructed to seal up the book until the time of the end around this period). It continued to be used by the Samaritans till 135 CE. (Rabbis claim the current system was at creation then… Read more »
I failed to mention that Brad Scott was on the History Channel for his expertise on The War Scroll found in Qumran cave 1. So if you watched that you saw him.
I think part of the problem is that we fail to recognize that people are on different levels. It’s like the big complaint that some have toward many schools these days where material is being presented on the lowest level so that no child gets left behind. The complaint is that many kids are being under-taught. When my family moved from Ohio to NC in my 5th grade year, the scope and sequence of my new school was way behind where my old one was. I was bored and stayed there until I graduated. The typical synagog school in the… Read more »
Well said. I was bored in 9th grade SS because I attended Christian school and was hungry for the Word, not satisfied with a teacher who only skimmed/ read the lesson last night and not truly excited about the Word.
“I think part of the problem is that we fail to recognize that people are on different levels.” And, I think, not just on the “student” level. I’ve mentioned before that while I’ve got a BA in Bible, and look like a ‘Teacher’ on those Spiritual Gifts tests, I am actually pretty lousy at planning and giving lessons. Sit me down with a group of people in a Biblical discussion, though, and let me listen, and I can usually pretty well figure out where the misunderstandings and ‘knowledge holes’ are, and gently try to clarify or fill them (I refer… Read more »
Ben, great point! I couldn’t agree more.