Today I want to address an issue I have seen in Sunday Schools all over. There seems to be a conflict about how to make disciples and teach and have deep learning, yet be open group and grow your Sunday School and church at the same time. I want to propose my suggestion to you today. If I was building a program, this is how I would set it up.
First, and I have said this over and over, Sunday School needs to have a 3 fold function of fellowship/connecting people, teaching them scripture, and sharing the Gospel/ outreach. With this function Sunday School needs to be fluid, open group with basic teaching. I know some hairs bristled at the idea of basic teaching, but stick with me, we will get there. The Sunday School classes need to be growing and changing, people coming in and people going out to do other ministry. They are fluid, so each lesson needs to stand on it’s own. Don’t make a plan to build a class of 25 people who will stay together for 20 years. Plan for 8 people who will someday make up 8 classes of 10 people. Plan to grow and expand.
Make departments, not classes. Focus on building a department full of classes, with a department head. Make a Young Adult department, encourage them to coordinate between classes, have activities together and do ministry as a department. Grow that department, add classes and teachers and workers. Think bigger and more forward.
Build a ministry based on a philosophy of reaching people, teaching them about God’s word and growing them into community. We have to change the mindset that we can put people into a 50 minute Sunday School and have them come out mature disciples. Stay with me here, what I am going to suggest next I think is the key and the answer. You can disagree with me, but this is what I’ve seen and experienced.
Mature believers have no business sitting in a Sunday School. The key to maturing believers in Sunday School is service. The structure I proposed and will continue to propose needs people to serve. To grow classes and keep them at the optimal range of 8 to 12 people, you need a lot of teachers. Each class should have a teacher, an assistant or apprentice, a prayer coordinator, a secretary and maybe a fellowship coordinator. Each department needs a department head, a secretary and an activities coordinator. The entire Sunday School needs a director, secretary and activities coordinator. You should have a person or group working on outreach and evangelism connected to Sunday School. Classes need to contact, visit and reach out. There is a lot to be done, and the people need to be mobilized. Real discipleship happens while serving. The Bible teaching is important, but if you want people to go deep, have them teach.
Remember, the goal of Sunday School is life transformation the other 6 days a week. We are not teaching simple facts, we are giving people the opportunity to discover something that will change their lives, then asking them to use it. They use it in service. If someone is a mature believer, they need to be in service. Everyone can do something, they can pray or send a postcard. Even your children need service roles and opportunities.
In addition to Sunday School, I recommend a Small Group or Discipleship training time to do some more in depth, closed material. I recommend people together for 1 on 1 mentoring, for closed small group discipleship and mission projects in addition to Sunday School. This gives them a chance to learn, and to apply what they have learned, and help your church achieve the mission of going and making disciples. I pray your SS is growing, vibrant and healthy. If you would like consultation on your Sunday School, please email me at jdanbarnes@yahoo.com.
Nicely said. I agree. We tend to over think things. Keep it simple. Service/ministry is the key.
This discussion gets back to the primary function of a church. We, as a denomination, spend a lot of money trying to disciple goats into sheep. We, also, throw the poor goat into service which reinforces the “fact” that they already mistakenly believe (since the law is on their heart)…that they are saved by/kept by works. The result of a goat’s service is either reinforcement that they are “saved” or discouragement and a hasty exit. I understand what you mean, and completely agree that 50 minutes (30 after “prayer requests” and fun discourse about the Cardinals or American Idol) is not going to go far in disciplining our folks. I disagree that service is what brings transformation and growth. I do not mean to be trite, but God the Holy Spirit sanctifies us as we study, pray, and serve, etc… Growth in the knowledge and the love of the Savior is what should drive service. Daily preaching the Gospel to ourselves and growing with believers, as iron sharpens iron, in our SS class. If we have no interest in the Bible and His people, no amount of service will transform us. I just hate to discard any SS time for meaty discussions of the Bible. Divide the classes into differentiated instruction, if you have enough people and if you have enough new believers/potential converts. Don’t discard deep classes just because they should be doing it at home.
I appreciate the rest of the discussion and agree that a SS class can be a nice tool for service, if it is made up of at least some semi-mature folks. Service, driven by a heart/heart knowledge of the Savior and His Gospel, is God-honoring .
Thank you very much for the good information!
Mark, I find your view of Sunday School pretty common, especially the comment about not discarding “deep classes”, and while I agree that Biblical knowledge is valuable, unapplied Biblical knowledge is like service without love. In my experience, I believe the meaty and deep classes belong elsewhere, Sunday night, small groups, mentoring.
Let me throw this out there, lots of talk about “deep” Sunday School, what is a deep class? Are you discussing the validity of gentile conversion in the view of the Apostles, are you talking about the types of covenants, and if we are in a convenetal system? Are you discussing views of interpritation of Paul? If deep is looking at Romans and applying it, then yes, do that. If deep is contrasting pre, mid and post millenial viewpoints, no. If you wanna talk about tongues or dispensations or contrast the views of atonement, have a small group. Talk about how the Law teaches us about how perfect God is and how screwed up we are. Talk about sin and how we are free in Christ. Talk about the fact Jesus is coming back, don’t bog people down with when and how. Talk about grace and mercy, not the Jewish perspective on eternity and Sheol. That’s my opinion anyway.
maybe there is a need for BOTH
the self-contained lesson that has within it a teaching that can be applied that very week
AND
the kind of longitudinal training that helps in Christian formation (particularly of the young) which provides nourishment for growing in the faith over a period of time
Both are intense in their purpose, but one acknowledges that Christian transformation is a process, and the other is meant as a help for those who may come only intermittently who still need the Word to live
Fair enough. Can we agree, however, that we are not in a crisis in our denomination with too much teaching, but too little? We are a breeding ground for those who end up watching TBN, buying the Joyce Meyer Bible and sending in faith seeds, because we are Gospel and Bible-starved. I enjoy the Gospel Project material because it prods some along while still feeding those beyond the milk. Sunday school is no place for a 8 session study discussion on Supralapsarianism…but we could certainly spend more time on the meaning of the Gospel and its application rather than the rote memorization of the same stories/evangelism methods over and over, then sending the fledgling disciple to service/evangelize where atheists, who know the Bible better than many of us, eat them up with dumb arguments and 200 year old strawmen. How often do we discuss the attributes of God in SS? the old testament in light of the new? True versus false conversion (or conversion at all)? The atonement (not debating views, but just explaining the basics of it)? Seldom. Those are deep topics… that fuel true service. The more we know Him and what we were saved from, the more we grow to serve him out of joy rather than obligation/for our self-salvation. I love the idea of SS classes as evangelism units, as long as they have some basic training, understand salvation (and are saved) and are serving for the right reason. We hurry the poor souls to service since they have a new conversion (hopefully) zeal, but without being equipped with solid tools.
We are not disagreeing here, brother. Thank you for your passion for service and for Him.
1 Cor. 15:58
I agree that we need to teach foundational doctrines of Grace, forgiveness, the attributes of God, faith, we need to teach prayer, spiritual disciplines, forgiveness, love, assurance of Salvation, spiritual warfare and these things we need daily in our Christian life.
I’m inclined to agree with Mark on this one. I’m not entirely convinced that SS has to do all three: fellowship, teaching, outreach. OUTreach means Christians going out and making disciples in everyday life. I think SS is the main place where they are to learn how to do that. I’m certainly not saying that we don’t allow the lost to come and be a part, but I disagree that we should dumb it down for them.
Chris, I bristle as the phrase “dumb it down” because we teach scripture and how to apply it. What I see when we try to go deep, meaning not teaching scripture, but theory and opinion is we get bogged down, confuse people and get no where. I have never and never will refer to teaching the words of Christ or teachings of scripture as “dumbing down” our teaching.
Yep.
Dan,
I apologize. Poor choice of words on my part. I still respectfully disagree with your post. I’m probably hyper-sensitive to the subject of SS because I’m a SS director in an area where churches have been taught to enroll every unbeliever they can into SS and hope that by them getting “plugged in” to SS they will eventually come to Christ. While this method is effective at temporarily boosting attendance, it is neither biblical or effective long term. In Scripture, I see believers going into the world and evangelizing (proclaming the Gospel) and then when people are converted they join a community of believers where they are taught and trained.
With a slight perspective change, we plug unbelievers into Sunday School so they can hear the word, because faith comes through hearing. I understand your point about the church only integrating believers, but that is why we have the requirements we do for Church Membership. View Sunday School like those time Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. It’s an opportunity to minister, share and reach, not so much a group of Christians only, for us, by us and only with us.
I think a lot of what you would categorize as “theory and opinion” are categorized as “teaching scripture” by others. Can you give a clearer basis for your categorization that itself could be categorized as “teaching scripture”?
Jim, this is why I’m a huge proponent of curriculum. There is little reason for the average SSS teacher to attempt to create their own curriculum and teach when there is so much solid Bible content out there to use. For example, Lifeway has material that will cover every book of the Bible, it’s a good timeline, full of helps, commentaries and has educators and writers and editors to ensure it’s solid, yet gives a teacher some options for personalizing. I really think good, program wide curriculum solves 99% of that issue.
I certainly don’t have any problem with people using curricula. However, I think you missed the import of my question. I’ll use your answer as an example. Nowhere in the scriptures does it say to use curricula. In fact, Holy Scripture itself is sufficient for our didactic needs, which I think your original point was making:
“What I see when we try to go deep, meaning not teaching scripture, but theory and opinion is we get bogged down, confuse people and get no where.”
But you propose a method for teaching that isn’t specifically recommended in the Bible. By your argument, you can’t teach this method because it’s not teaching scripture. It’s only opinion. Now I happen to agree with much of what you said in the article. However, I think you might have an inconsistency here that you might need to refine, or “go deeper” on, in order to strengthen.
As to your argument that Lifeway curricula are sufficient (perhaps 99% so), I wouldn’t teach that dogmatically. To do so would be one pope shy of a Baptist magisterium. (I offer that observation in good humor.)
My point being Jim that often people use scripture as a spring board for tangents, pet projects, theories and the like. I can quote three verses in Revalation and the tall for an hour about my escatological viewpoint. There is no hard and fast comment I can put down to deal with this issue.
As for the using curriculum to teach isn’t using scripture, I think your definition of curriculum is slighty off. Curriculum is a map to teaching a subject. You still teach the subject, so curriculum on . Timothy gives you a map to teach . Timothy. It’s like taking a walk using a map, you are still walking, but you have a guide to help you get somewhere. Too many times, we walk in circles because we don’t want a map.
And please refrain from the “we can’t use this because the Bible didn’t say we can” argument, because that argument is not found anywhere in the Bible. Yes. . . that was a joke. Not funny? I tried.
I’d compare Sunday School to the garden of strawberries my grandparents planted–to the great joy of us grandkids–at their mini-ranch in Campbell, Texas. I think it was a relatively small part of their five-acre “mini ranch”, perhaps only 30 foot by 50 foot (which, if you’ve ever tended a garden, actually is very large.)
But it resulted in strawberries in season and–through the magic of freezing and preserving–out. A well organized Sunday School is the garden and scaffolding that supports the making, training, and service of disciples. It supports conversions and baptisms year in and year out. And it is a purpose-filled effort to obey Jesus Christ and to fulfill the Great Commission.
Thanks for the blog, Dan. Great way to explain the living nature of an effective Sunday School. It is a living, growing, reproducing organism that provides strength and sustenance to the local church, not JUST a program.
Great Post.
Dan –
Great reminder; Thanks!
Still trying to keep all the plates spinning and find time to help implement this SS philosophy here. I’m still hoping and praying that parents will get involved as their kids (youth) are being involved in church.
Go, Greg, go!!
I’ll add that the Lord of the Harvest is responsible for providing the workers. Which doesn’t mean we can’t ask, but the ones he provides he will also give spiritual gifting to accomplish the task he has called them to. We mainly need to be sensitive to his leadership of those workers and do what is humanly possible to make sure they’re well-trained.
We’re in this with the Father in issuing invitations and welcoming those who accept them to, if you will, the pre-wedding preparations.
From one Greg to another: Thanks!
I do have a want for more teachers, but what I was really getting at was hoping that as the youth come and are fed (hopefully I’m being useful to the Lord) and become entrenched in the Body, that their parents will want to come see what has gotten into their kids.
Most of the group don’t come to SS but come to Wed night. Most of their parents don’t go anywhere for church, much less here. I’m trying to care for, teach, and reach out to the kids and, through them, to their parents.
But, God called me to this position, and I know He is in control. I just pray that these kids have broken hearts of good soil sooner rather than later: I’m impatient to see their Joy in Him and their praise of His grace.
So, how does all this organization work out in a church where there are 40 people, making up 7 classes? The idea of departments is completely out of my range of comprehension, as well as assigned roles in the classes. I’ve only seen a teacher (and perhaps an assistant) for each class, and I’m a life-long Southern Baptist (50+) years.
Depends on your growth. But seven classes for 40 people should leave room for growth if you have adequate space. Assuming an average of under six per class and a largest class size of no more than 10, if the largest class grew more than a couple of people you could start by using both teacher and assistant to lead discussions.
Each class could have a member with the specific responsibily of tracking potential prospects and leading outreach. Assuming several small adult classes, you could treat them like a virtual department and have it physically assemble once a month for shared fellowship and a social or two a quarter (one light, one more involved).
The question is how that turns into the groups looking for opportunities to focus outward rather than inward to seek evangelism opportunities. I’m not trying to answer for Dan, but those are thoughts that came to mind as I thought through the situation you described.
Teacher and assistant lead separate, smaller groups within the larger class at as few as 7 or 8 participants.<—what I was trying to get to…
Ya, what Greg said. You start small, where you are. Have your teachers begin to look for an apprentice. Lead by example, begin to model the principles. Begin visiting and taking Sunday School members. Most importantly, talk about it. Promote it, get excited, share ideas and visions. Talk about how important Sunday School is, find other people who have a passion. Make it a priority, it’s not just a left over ministry from 1957, it’s a great ministry, so get behind it. Be the champion, it wont change itself.