Teaching As Craft

 The Sunday School Teacher 9

          When I was a child, a craft was something I did badly and only under protest. The popsicle sticks and the Elmer's Glue and the tiny house model set before me turned in my hand into an unholy mess. Many of those around me, however, produced veritable works of art. Their parents crowed in delight. Mine turned away in horror.

All right, I admit I oversold that a little, but you get my drift. As a term, craft can be both a noun and a verb, but the condition of the craft as a noun is dependent on the application of craft as a verb. When you study and practice your craft with diligent care, the result is a work of art, regardless of the field of your endeavor. A carpenter and a craftsman are two different things. The latter was first the former, but by dint of diligent care, he flourished into the latter.

It is my opinion that too many Sunday School teachers are carpenters when what they ought to be are craftsmen. I realize it is not fair to expect the volunteer teacher to have the same level of expertise as one finds in a professional, but all too often that becomes an excuse. The result is a Sunday School class that resembles a homeowner's attempt at fine furniture. The wood is chosen ad hoc, the angles do not meet, let alone the rounds, and it is not fit for anything but an obscure patio somewhere.

It does not have to be that way. Teaching is both an art and a science. As an art, there are aspects that produce good teaching that perhaps cannot be defined, only recognized or felt. But as a science, these things that create good teaching, or make good teachers, can be identified. Once identified, they can be incorporated into your teaching, transforming you from someone who merely holds the position of teacher to one who effectively transmits truth, which produces change in the life of the student.

Another way of saying this is that there are laws that relate to teaching, as Clarence Benson suggests in his work, The Christian Teacher. "Is not the Holy Spirit dishonored by the teacher who seeks to be guided by the laws of pedagogy? Not at all. One does not dishonor the Holy Spirit in complying with the laws of gravitation. One does not dishonor the Holy Spirit in becoming acquainted with the laws which govern the working of the human mind. No one was more fully led by the Holy Spirit than our Lord Jesus Christ and yet no one more consistently followed the laws of pedagogy."

Laws of pedagogy is not a phrase that rolls off the tongue, true. But they exist nevertheless. If you violate those laws, negative consequences ensue. Alternatively, if you follow them, good things happen. To reach for yet another example, perhaps we could liken an effective teacher to an excellent chef. Certainly, there is some art involved in turning out high-quality cuisine, but there is much more science than art. Christopher Kimball, a fixture on the New England cooking scene, has built an entire career around this, and my wife has a hefty America's Test Kitchen cookbook that proves it. Each recipe is not just made, but made repeatedly while adjusting various ingredients, implements, heat sources, and cooking times. The result is a recipe that almost always turns out well, even in the hands of a home cook.

In the same manner, highly effective teachers study the laws of teaching and learn them well. They strive to incorporate these laws and to do so with consistency. This consistent application of the laws of teaching on the part of the teacher produces in that teacher, over time, a habit of truly excellent teaching.

          About twenty years ago, I picked up a small volume by John Milton Gregory entitled The Seven Laws of Teaching. And it changed my life. Gregory was a 19th-century American educator, known primarily for founding the University of Illinois and publishing that little book. As an author, I appreciate how rare it is to find a work nigh on two centuries old that is still published and read. But to find one that is so powerfully clear and helpful is to find a gem indeed. Many of my readers are familiar with Gregory's work, but most are not.

In the section of this book that follows, I am going to take mental ownership of Gregory's work and do my best to transfer it to you. To the extent that you, in turn, take ownership of these laws and apply them, you will excel even in a venue as humble as the Sunday School class. You will also find that habitually applying these laws transfers into other areas of life, improving your results in those as well.

Teaching is a craft. Both our subject – God's Word – and our students call for us to be not mere carpenters, but craftsmen. They are together worthy of so much more than the hurried and harried thirty-minute babysitting session we often find in Sunday School. Together, let us turn the page and find out how to grow, how to excel even, how to become all that God wants you to become as you teach His children.

The Teacher's Power

 The Sunday School Teacher 8

          In a secular context, the teacher's power is a combination of knowledge, experience, and talent. Sunday School is not a secular context. It is not that knowledge, experience, and talent do not matter; it is rather that you cannot make a spiritual impact without spiritual power back of it. We will spend a considerable amount of time in the upcoming chapters examining the philosophical and practical aspects of being a good teacher, but there must be a spiritual foundation underlying all of this if any of it is to matter.

Paul voices this clearly when he tells the Corinthian church, And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. (I Corinthians 2.4-5) He had not built that church on his own intellectual brilliance or native force of personality. It was no petty personality cult. He had instead constructed it with spiritual power for spiritual purposes. As a Sunday School teacher, you can work, incentivize, study, illustrate, review, strategize, and fight to make progress, but that will not make it happen. You must have the Lord behind you in all that you say and do.

We see here an intrinsic connection with the previous chapter. What did Christ build His authority on? The Word of God, an eminently spiritual book. Not only is the Bible authoritative, but it is also life-giving. As the word of life (Philippians 2.16), the Scripture, as with Adam, breathes life into us. All that is good and right about a life well-lived comes from building that life on a biblical foundation. It brings life with it.

A few weeks ago, a liberal Baptist church here in town called our church. Their baptistry had been broken for years, but they had someone who wanted to be baptized. Could they use ours? I did not give an immediate answer, but I did request a meeting with someone from the church. The lady who showed up a few hours later was sincere, albeit misguided. She marveled over the fact that our church was healthy and growing. She saw our expanded parking lot, our newly renovated auditorium, and the dozens of missionary plaques on the walls and goggled.

Standing in front of our working and frequently used baptistry, she gave voice to some bad philosophy their church had embraced. She referenced how they had tried to change the music to attract young people. She spoke sadly of how large the crowds were for the dramas celebrating Black History Month, but how small they were for the worship services. After letting her roll along that track for a while, I gently interrupted her. I told her that the reason our church was so vigorously alive was simple, and it had nothing to do with changing the music because we still embraced the old hymns. Instead, I pointed her to Christ and the Word of God as the reason our church had life. We prioritized lifting up Christ, pointing men and women and boys and girls to Him. Our classes and services were filled with explanation of and application from the Bible. Yes, we were a Baptist church located on a dead-end street in a town filled with Catholics, but there was much life in us, not because of us but because of the Saviour and the Word of Life.

Roy Irving said it this way: "If Christian experience or knowledge of God is sought from sources other than this revelation, then Christian education is decimated to a humanistic, anthropocentric religious education. In true Christian education, the Bible is the objective body of truth to which the experiences of pupils are to be related and by which the pupils' experiences are to be affected."

In the 19th century, a young street preacher named Dwight Moody used to gather a crowd on Chicago street corners by placing his hat on the ground and racing around it, shouting at the top of his voice, "It's alive! It's alive!" When a sufficient number of people had noticed, he would lift the hat from the ground and reveal the Bible underneath. Taking up the old black Book, he would preach Christ. And people would come to life, would be born again.

The Word of God, as powerfully effective as it is, must be paired with the personal ministration of the Spirit of God, or little gets done. How does a humble Junior Boys Sunday School teacher access the power of the Spirit of God? On his knees. 'Tis ever the way and the only way. Christ Himself pleaded for the Spirit to empower Him and urged us to do the same. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. (Luke 24.49) If even Jesus needed the Holy Spirit (Luke 4.14) to make an impact, what makes you think we can get along on something less?

I do not mean to imply that a teacher's entire prayer life should consist of asking the Holy Spirit to empower her teaching. She should do that, yes, but it is only natural and right for much of that prayer life to revolve around the students under her care. And as you build a relationship with each student, the cares of their life will naturally come through your heart to your lips as you talk to your Father for them. Their struggles at school. Their catastrophically dysfunctional home life. The spiritually poisonous atmosphere in which they are being reared. Their hopes, fears, dreams, and tears. Their spiritual walk. Their future. Their safety. Their heart to be open to hear what the Lord would speak to them.

The spiritually powerful teacher will pray for each student in his class at least every week. He will not just call their name. He will lift their soul, their life, to the Throne and seek God's grace for them. However, to pray effectively and teach powerfully, that same teacher must live an outwardly separated, inwardly holy life.

There is a direct biblical link between how we live out our lives and the level of the Spirit's power flowing through us. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. (I Thessalonians 1.5) You cannot live like the devil and expect to enjoy the ministration of God's power changing lives in your class. Indeed, I would argue you cannot even flirt with living like the devil and expect to do so. Thus, one who would teach spiritual things in the Spirit's power must live a life both outwardly and inwardly above reproach.

It is from this construct that we derive what is commonly referred to as a set of requirements for being a Sunday School teacher. The entire concept is controversial, especially among the evangelical crowd and those influenced by them. To them, the idea that a pastor can set requirements for who can and cannot teach in God's church is legalistic and controlling. To me, though, it is just the logical outcome of the necessity for spiritual power in a spiritual task.

I will not dwell here at length on either holiness or standards. I have written an entire book about each of those subjects, the former lengthy and the latter brief. But I will here summarize those two books with this thought: holiness is an inward grace that works its way outward. Thus, while we cannot establish rules or requirements for the inner man, we can and should for the outer man.

In the early days of the Sunday School movement, this was better understood. In my reading, I came across the following rather astounding list of requirements for Sunday School teachers of the First Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington, in 1932:

 

Rules for Teachers

1. All teachers admitted into the school must enter as substitute teachers, unless specially recommended by the pastor or general superintendent of the school; said recommendation shall be based on the applicant's Bible knowledge and his or her ability to impart that knowledge.

2. Each teacher must be willing to surrender his or her class at any time at the request of the superintendent.

3. If at any time teachers find they cannot properly prepare the message for the class and attend to the follow-up work, it is their duty to report this fact to the superintendent.

4. It is expected that all teachers will be interested in the business and social affairs of their classes.

5. All offerings from the Sunday School must be sent through the Sunday School office. they must be given to the general secretary or sent to the church office.

6. All teachers must sign the class report cards each Sunday.

7. All records must be accurately kept and sent to the general secretary's office on time.

8. The first of each month all teachers shall send a written report of the work done in her or her class to the superintendent of the division.

9. As our school is based on prayer, all teachers are expected to attend the 9:25 prayer service each Sunday morning, unless providentially hindered.

To the Applicant:

1. Are you conscious of a call from God to this work?

2. Have you practical knowledge of the Word of God?

3. What age do you seem best adapted to teach?

4. What experience have you had?

5. Have you a burning love in your heart to give out His Word to others?

6. Are you willing to be obedient and submissive to those in authority over you?

7. Do you use tobacco in any form?

8. Do you approve of worldly amusements, theaters, movies, cards, dancing, etc.? Please state fully.

After taking the class, if the members who have accepted the Lord Jesus are not built up in the faith, or the others are not brought to the Lord, if the class decreases in size instead of increases, and if you are not in sympathy with the administration of the school, this should be a clear message to you that you are out of touch with Him and that you are in the wrong place.

Agreement to be Signed by All Teachers

I cheerfully accept the statement of doctrine of this school as recorded within, and subscribe to the rules.

In assuming this office I agree to be loyal to the interests of the school, to seek its purity and prosperity, and to be subject to the discipline of the school.

(signed)

 

That list makes my own church's teacher requirements seem relatively paltry, by comparison. For what it is worth, here they are:

 

1) You must attend every public church service unless you are sick or working.

2) You need to attend the weekly Leaders' Meeting.

3) You are required to follow our church's platform dress code while teaching.

4) You will need to keep accurate records.

5) You should write, call, or visit your absentees regularly.

6) Since your example and personal spirituality are so important in teaching, you are expected to refrain from ungodly activities and amusements and cultivate a close, vibrant walk with the Lord.

 

You may think our church's teaching requirements are too little or too much, and you may very well be correct. But I fully reject the modern idea that the teaching of God's Word in an official church capacity should have no spiritual requirements at all. Of course, bear in mind, being separated from the world does not make you holy or spiritual. It does, however, prepare you to be holy and spiritual and protect you where you are. Put another way round, without such external separation from the world and active loyalty to the work of God, the Holy Spirit cannot get you far enough into holiness to trust you with His power. And without that power, you will not make much progress with the students you love so much.

Live clean and pure. Live separately from the world. Cleave to the Lord much in private duties of the Word and prayer. Be actively loyal to the program of your church. Yield to the Spirit's influence in your heart. And then watch as He does spectacular things in the lives of your students.

The Word of God and the Holy Spirit are the power of your teaching ministry. Above all, you must use these, or everything that follows in this book will fall to the ground.

The Teacher's Pattern

The Sunday School Teacher 7

If this next sentence comes as a shock, you should not be teaching Sunday School. The teacher's pattern is Jesus Christ. Of course, in all things, Christ is our pattern. In sewing terms, He is the one we copy, seeking to replicate exactly in our own lives that which we see in Him. But this is true not just in the generic sense for the Sunday School teacher but in the specific sense. Jesus was a teacher.

Matthew 7:29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Matthew 13:54 And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?

Mark 1:22 And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.

Mark 2:13 And he went forth again by the sea side; and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught them.

Mark 4:2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine,

Mark 9:31 For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.

Mark 10:1 And he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judaea by the farther side of Jordan: and the people resort unto him again; and, as he was wont, he taught them again.

Mark 11:17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.

Mark 12:35 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David?

Luke 4:15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

Luke 19:47 And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him,

Luke 20:1 And it came to pass, that on one of those days, as he taught the people in the temple, and preached the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes came upon him with the elders,

John 6:59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.

John 7:28 Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not.

John 8:20 These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come.

Parse that however you like, it is a staggering point of emphasis in His life. The constant repetition of the phrase, "he taught", is not merely for rhetorical flourish. Every word in the Bible is there on purpose. Jesus both excelled at and drew attention to the necessity for teaching.

Having established He is our pattern in this area, how is He our pattern? In other words, besides being a teacher, what did Jesus do as a teacher that is copyable by us, for lack of a better term? I see five answers to that question in the passages above.

First, Christ taught with authority.

When I say authority here, I do not mean that Christ dogmatically asserted truth rather than offered up gentle suggestions. At the risk of quoting myself, let me give you a brief selection from my book, "The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached":

The prevailing rabbinic system of His day reveled in tying itself tightly to previous rabbinic interpretations and authorities. Edersheim, the nineteenth-century converted Jew who became an Anglican preacher, in his fabulous book on the life of Christ, tells of a rabbi in Jesus' day who was proud of the fact that he had nothing original to say. Instead, he only passed along to the people the traditional interpretations that he had been handed from previous centuries of rabbinic scholarship. Jesus turned that system on its head, and, rejecting the supposed earthly authorities, fearlessly asserted His own interpretation. For he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. (Matthew 7.29)

The point for us here is that Jesus' teaching was authoritative because it rested on the Word of God. He did not have to quote a guy who quoted a guy who quoted a guy who quoted from the Oral Torah handed down by Moses alongside the actual Torah. He just quoted Scripture. He strenuously insisted that people turn their gaze to the Scriptures themselves. Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures. (Matthew 22.29) The rabbinic system had mangled the pure intent of the Word of God with a massive system of pseudo-hermeneutically derived principles of application. In the process, they had obscured the Word of God and made themselves and their interpretations the authority.

When you stand (or sit) to teach in front of a group of God's children, always do so from an open Bible. Refer to it often. Turn to passages in it. Read from them. Ask them to read them. Craft your points around the Word of God. Illustrate your applications with biblical people. It is not wrong to use additional resources or even to refer to them, but the bulk of your teaching ought to come from the Bible itself. In you and me, there is no inherent authority. In the Word of God, there is all the authority of an omniscient, infallible, inerrant God.

Second, Christ knew human nature and used it to His advantage.

I do not mean He manipulated people. I mean, He related to them, identified with them, connected with them very well. Put another way round, He knew what to say to whom to engage them.

With some people, like the woman at the well, He played on her curiosity. With others, like the Pharisees, He built such a tight box of legal reasoning that they were compelled to admit He was correct. Christ was a great emoter, so to speak. It is all over His life and ministry. As such, He was able to instinctively feel what His target audience was feeling and convey to them that He was feeling it. I do not mean to imply that Jesus was a comelian. But at weddings, He was happy with people, and at funerals, He was sad with them. In another context, Ezekiel put it this way, Then I came to them of the captivity of Tel-abib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar, and I sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days. (Ezekiel 3.15)

Whatever age or stage your Sunday School students are in, you need to connect with them, and do it so well that it is almost instinctive. You must care about what they care about, even if you would otherwise not care about it at all. With the mechanic, you talk about race cars. With the farmer, you talk about rain. With the senior, you ask to see pictures of their grandchildren. I have broken through many a crusty teenager's aloof distance with the simple question, "Tell me, what is the best thing that happened to you this week?" Ask them that question four weeks in a row, and watch their face brighten when they see you coming to ask it the fifth week. Now then, you are getting somewhere. And you will see it on their countenance when you stand before them to teach.

Third, Jesus used a variety of teaching methods.

I have previously asserted the superiority of the traditional Sunday School class approach. I am not here retracting it. But within that construct, you can and should still use some variety in your teaching. Speaking broadly, the younger your class is, the more variety you should employ.

Christ did. Sometimes, He lectured. Much of the time, He engaged in vigorous verbal discussions that revolved around an exchange of difficult questions. He was a master illustrator, getting His point across by likening it to something with which they were already familiar. He even used object lessons. So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? (John 13.12)

Fourth, our Lord knew His material.

We see this in Him first at the rather young age of twelve. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. (Luke 2.46-47) Of course, growing up in the home of conscientious observing Jews like Joseph and Mary, the Torah would have been His first textbook and His primary textbook. It is apparent from how easily its quotations flowed from His lips that He internalized it. As He Himself said, A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. (Luke 6.45) He packed Himself full of the Scripture, of both a head and a heart knowledge of God, and it flowed out of Him at every turn.

"Ok, Bro. Brennan, but you can't seriously expect me to know the Bible as well as Jesus did."

No. But I can expect you to aim for that. Christ is the goal, is He not? For each of us. In every area of the Christian life. That is the whole point of this chapter, after all.

Beyond that, however, is a more simplistic yet still accurate application. Jack Hyles used to say, "Don't tell 'em everything you know. Somebody might ask you a question when you get through." There is nothing more off-putting than raising your hand, vocalizing a question that has formed in your mind, and watching the teacher stare at you blankly with zero idea of how to respond. Your mind screams, "Why are they teaching me? They don't know any more than I do!"

Leadership is confidence. Put another way round, no one wants to follow someone who does not seem to know where you both should be going, let alone how to get there. Your class's confidence in you will wither if you are tried and found wanting in the knowledge department. I realize we cannot be as deep as Jesus was because He is God and we are not, but we can know our stuff. That we certainly can do.

Fifth, Jesus' life exemplified what He taught.

Before you start, no, I do not think it is reasonable to expect moral perfection from my Sunday School teaching staff. Nor should the students. But if our life does not in a significant way match the words coming out of our mouth, what is the point of us saying them?

Jesus Christ lived perfectly everything He taught. He did not flaunt that. As D. L. Moody said, "Lighthouses blow no horns; they just shine." But when He opened His mouth and taught of love, it found a ready audience in the hearts of the people He loved. If He called for mercy, it was from a platform of mercy extended. If He urged unconditional obedience to the Lord, there was nothing in His life that argued the contrary.

In a sense, this is not a fair expectation. I have spent my entire life preaching a perfect Book. I am certainly not a perfect man, nor will I be this side of Glory. Which means at some point, my preaching, teaching, writing, parenting, witnessing, leading, praying, mentoring, and counseling will all fall short. My life cannot possibly line up precisely with the perfect Word of God. But our people understand that, in my experience. Yes, there are the occasional unreasonable, intractable, obstinate individual who sees us doing 30 MPH in a 25 MPH school zone and thinks they can throw out every lesson we have ever taught. But they are the exception, not the rule. By and large, if you genuinely seek to live what you teach, your students can tell. And they care. Deeply. If it does not impact your heart, you cannot reasonably expect it to influence theirs.

I have had many good teachers and some downright excellent ones. Teachers who inspired me, who pushed me, who brought more out of me than I thought I had in me, who changed my life. Without exception, those latter teachers showed me Jesus. In their life and on their lips.

Be someone's excellent teacher. Do not just tell them of Christ. Show them Christ.

 

Eight Great Purposes of Sunday School

 The Sunday School Teacher 6

If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. Put another way round, if your church is having Sunday School to have Sunday School, you will accomplish practically nothing. Without objectives, an army, no matter how well trained, equipped, and led, is useless. With objectives, however, you can protect yourself from the hamster wheel of meaningless activity. Objectives also function as guardrails, disciplining your curriculum and staffing choices.

What then are these objectives? What should you seek to accomplish with Sunday School? In this chapter, I am going to offer you eight categories or concepts, though it is not wrong to have additional ones directly related to your specific context.

Any Sunday School class's first objective should be to lead people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Before the teaching aspect of the Great Commission can be applied, the reaching aspect must be accomplished. The new birth is where everything begins. Absent such a foundation, it is pointless to construct anything on top. A good teacher will make sure he has personal knowledge of the state of the soul of each one of his students. He will not take others' word for it. He will ascertain this directly via an individual conversation with each person in his class.

Second, an effective Sunday School aims to guide each Christian into a continuing and committed relationship with the local church. As a lifelong Christian and pastor for nigh on three decades, I have met numerous genuine Christians who have little to no attachment to a particular local church. Not a single one of them has been a strong Christian. Wandering alone apart from the flock, and the watchcare of a shepherd, an isolated sheep is easy prey. A Sunday School class is not the only answer to this problem, but it is a good one. Like Legos built one upon another, connected at numerous points, a student inserted solidly into a Sunday School class should automatically become an integral part of the larger structure of the church. If your class is not doing that, you need to rework some things to achieve that.

Third, a good Sunday School class seeks to develop in each Christian a solid practice of personal devotions. So much of the Christian's life revolves around their relationship with God's Word. Some years ago, I undertook a study of Psalm 119, and that was my major takeaway. Absent regular time in the Word of God, the Christian will remain stunted, a pygmy where he could have been a giant, a hollowed-out, shambling concentration camp victim where he could have been the very specimen of health. Yet our flesh fights us every step of the way between here and Home. We need constant reminders, constant emphasis, constant discipline. You will do your students a great turn if you show them how to interact privately every day with God's Word and then help them build the steady practice of it.

Fourth, one of the primary tasks of a Sunday School class is to deeply embed age-appropriate basic stories and doctrines of the Bible into the mind of each student. It is not that we are not to aim at the heart, for that is always appropriate and necessary. It is that Sunday School should also equip the mind, furnishing it with the mental props necessary to fill out sermons decades yet in that child's future.

Think of a green screen, if you will. Increasingly, movies and even television series are filmed on an otherwise empty set in front of a green background. That background is then digitally filled in with whatever setting is necessary for the scene. What is placed onto that green screen can vary widely, but it becomes the context required to understand the dialogue taking place between the actors properly.

If you do it right, for the rest of his life, a child will be able to listen to almost any sermon, and instantly furnish the green screen necessary to interpret and apply the sermon he is hearing correctly. David and Goliath. The Trinity. The Rapture. Stephen being stoned. The Tabernacle. Each one of those short sentences fills the mind of the lifelong Bible student with immediate visual and or mental information. Children soak up information like a sponge. The wise teacher takes advantage of that fact and the time given him to cram his student's head full to bursting with biblical information.

Allow me to take a moment to expand on the doctrinal side of this. There are some people who object to any formalized theological system. "Just preach the Bible!" they holler, as if explaining sanctification in depth is somehow damaging. But it is neither sinful nor unwise to organize biblical information and convey those truths to children systematically. Indeed, I would argue it is eminently necessary.

As independent Baptists, we do not catechize our children at home. (Perhaps we should, but let us set that to the side for the moment.) How then is that child supposed to hold to, let alone defend, the faith in which he has never been grounded? Is it any wonder that they grow up independent Baptist but have no apparent problem switching to a jelloish evangelical non-denominational worship center as they hit adulthood? And I could furnish similar illustrations ad nauseum, world without end. A ten-year-old child in the Junior Boys' Sunday School class can and should learn theology. If he does not, we have no call to fault the Jehovah's Witnesses when they snatch him up in later years.

Fifth, a good Sunday School class will help develop in each child both the desire and the ability to serve God actively. We will speak more to this later in the practical section of this book, but a well-organized class provides both opportunity and instruction in such service for the Lord. Students need to sit down and hear the Word taught, certainly, but they need to get up and do something with it just as certainly. The Dead Sea is so named precisely because it is constantly taking in and never giving out. The carnal Christians that stare blankly at me from their pew in the sanctuary on the rare Sunday morning they choose to grace us with their presence are the enfleshed example of this. They attend, erratically, but do not serve. And their Christianity is a clogged-up, useless sort of thing. The best place to defeat such fleshliness is in the child. He is young and impressionable. Teach him to serve the Lord with a happy heart.

Sixth, a good Sunday School class… perhaps I should say teacher here… helps people not only to see the Word of God as relevant, but helps them see how to do so. A good Sunday School class teaches the child how to apply the Word of God to their own lives.

Take Proverbs, for example. The teenage Sunday School class should focus heavily on this book. In the process, students should learn not only what to do and what not to do as they make their daily choices, but they should also learn how to interpret and apply the principles and concepts taught in the wisdom books. If my student only knows what I tell him individually, I have failed him. He must learn how to apply biblical principles to the specifics of his own varied condition as the years roll by.

Seventh, a good Sunday School class will equip the child to answer the great faith questions and objections that inevitably come to each thinking person's mind. In other words, the teaching should include apologetics at some level, especially as the child ages.

In the now-outdated book, Youth and the Church, Roy Irving nevertheless furnishes us a still relevant passage on precisely this point. "Young people may sense conflicts between their own beliefs and the information they gain in school or hear from teen and adult friends with different beliefs. Teens' increased ability for independent thinking may make them critical of beliefs taught in childhood, especially if those beliefs have been taught in an authoritarian, unnatural, or bigoted manner. Doubting is an indication that one is maturing. Doubting can be healthy, for it can lead youth to come to a personal firsthand acceptance of truths. For most adolescents, the period of doubt does lead to a revision of some of his religious beliefs. The change is often in the direction of a more carefully thought-out and a more tenable faith. ...This aspect of adolescent development challenges youth workers to help guide youth through this turbulent period with an attitude of loving acceptance and understanding. This period of religious muddle suggests that youth be given opportunity to engage in discussion (with individual leaders and groups) in a permissive atmosphere. A dogmatic 'we don't discuss such things' attitude may squelch a teen's honest search for adequate reasons for believing what he does."

I am not here backsliding on my opinion that the Sunday School class should be taught authoritatively. I am, however, balancing that with the necessary understanding that teenagers, especially, should be given a time and place to question what they have been taught. They are going to do it eventually anyway. It is much better if they do it in a guided manner by an intelligent teacher prepared for each objection. It is the shield of faith that quenches the fiery darts of the devil. Faith in what? Not just God's Word generically, but God's Word specifically. Biblical writers were masters at bringing up their opponents' arguments first so they could furnish the proper defense against them. It would be wise for us to do likewise.

Lastly, a good Sunday School class helps the student to develop a biblical worldview. In the proverbial tale of the man looking at the world through rose colored glasses, everything took on a reddish hue. It literally colored everything he saw. In a similar manner, I want the children in my care to look at every single thing in their lives for their entire lives through a biblical lens. Politics. Economics. Sports. Money. Marriage. Parenting. Ethnicity. Crime. Priorities. Amusements. Music. Sexuality. Religion. Social media. The Word of God informs our understanding of all of these and more. The Holy Spirit will find much biblical ammunition to use when he rummages around in the mind of the well-educated Sunday School pupil, regardless of the topic in question.

"Well, Pastor Brennan, that all sounds good, but I'm exhausted just reading this list. How in the world can you possibly expect me to accomplish all of this? I'm just a Sunday School teacher, not a miracle worker."

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. As my college president, Wendall Evans, said so well, "Set your goal, plan your work, work your plan, and don't get sidetracked." If your approach to each week is to casually develop whatever biblical truth comes to mind, you will not come close to accomplishing this. Remember? If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. On the other hand, you can take this list and from it develop a plan of attack that covers the entire arc of the years a student spends in your care. You may not get it all done, no, but you will undoubtedly come much closer to accomplishing it if you aim at so doing than you will if you never think beyond this coming week's lesson.

Sunday School is an exceedingly valuable time, not just in the immediate slot this week, but in the aggregate of a twenty-year horizon. If you are wise, you will use it to the fullest possible effect.

Aim at something important. 'Tis the only way to hit it.

 

Should You Teach Sunday School?

 The Sunday School Teacher 5

I do not believe every Christian is cut out to teach Sunday School. I do believe every Christian is cut out to teach. Paul makes the latter point here quite clearly. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God. (Hebrews 5.12) Every Christian should teach someone else what they have learned and are learning about the Lord. As we have already mentioned, parents and soul winners are both examples of this, and neither position is a gifting; they are responsibilities.

Having said that, it does not then follow that since every mature Christian ought to be teaching in some way that every mature Christian should be teaching Sunday School. Teaching is, after all, a spiritual gifting. (Romans 12.6-7, I Corinthians 12.28, Ephesians 4.11) Think of a choir, if you will. Should every Christian make a joyful noise to the Lord? (Psalm 81.1) Of course. Should every Christian sing in the choir? Of course not. If you are not gifted in that area, the best thing for all involved is for you to enjoy their music ministry from your pew in the sanctuary.

The answer to the question posed in this chapter is two-fold, I think. There is first the need to discern whether teaching Sunday School is the direction in which your gifting lies. The second is how to develop that gifting once you have discovered it. Let us examine each in turn.

To discern this, I propose five questions and three ideas. I want you to first ask yourself whether you have evidenced the gift of teaching in other areas of your life. Are you a trainer at work? Do you have a natural knack for teaching young men how to do car maintenance or young women how to make sourdough? Do you find yourself readily explaining complex concepts to those around you? Is this something you have already done to some extent, even if only instinctively?

The second thing to ask yourself is whether teaching Sunday School is something you want to do. One of the marks that a man is genuinely called to the ministry is this very thing. This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. (I Timothy 3.1) I am not talking about a fleeting thought, a passing fancy. I am talking about something more continual. "You know, I would kind of like to try teaching a class someday." And the thought comes back to your mind repeatedly.

The third question is this: Are you patient in dealing with young people now? When you are handed a class roll book and a "Go get 'em, Tiger," you are not going to get patience automatically thrown in on top. Most Sunday School classes are children's classes. Almost every Sunday School teacher has taught children at some point. If little people get on your ever-loving last nerve simply by breathing, it might not be the ministry for you.

The fourth question to consider here is whether you are willing to meet your church's requirements for the position. I will speak more to the specifics of this in a later chapter, but suffice it to say, if you bristle at maintaining a specific standard or two, then perhaps you should limit your teaching to other venues.

The fifth question can only be asked further down the line. After you have been teaching for a bit, ask yourself, "Is there any evidence that God is blessing this work on my part?" Such evidence can be as simple as the class listening to you with apparent interest. In plain language, you do not bore them. Beyond that, however, and more importantly, are any of the students showing any signs of applying what you have been teaching? Is anybody's life being changed for the better? For that matter, is your own life being changed? Are you growing as a person and as a Christian in this process?

The three ideas I have for you include two practical and one spiritual. The first idea to help you discern whether teaching Sunday School is suitable for you is to enlist as a teacher helper first. Almost every Sunday School teacher could use an aide to do such things as help keep rowdy children quiet, take someone to the restroom, or help the teacher act out a Bible story. This will put you in a classroom on a regular basis. Your desire for a class of your own will either grow or shrink. Either way, it will be enlightening.

The second idea is to enlist as a teacher in a limited way, in a format that has an end date. Teach the Junior Boys class for four weeks about Joseph, and then analyze how it went. Think of this as a trial run or a shakedown cruise. Offer yourself as a substitute teacher for the summer. You can cover a number of teachers who are gone for a Sunday or two on vacation. It will be a good taste of what having your own class will be like. Give it a whirl.

The third idea has probably already occurred to you. If you think the Lord may want to use you in this area, ask Him to show you. I do not mean to ask Him for a specific miraculous sign. Just tell Him you are willing to do what He wants, and ask Him to confirm in your heart that this is what He wants. In all things spiritual, it is always appropriate to pray about it.

Let us turn now, briefly, to the second part of the question at the core of this chapter. If you have determined the Lord would have you teach Sunday School, that you are gifted at it, and you have undertaken it, how can you develop that gifting? Having set out to become a teacher, how do you become a good one?

          I offer you four suggestions here. First, teach. One of the most important things I did when I surrendered to preach the gospel 38 years ago was to begin preaching immediately. I preached my first sermon a week later, and I kept hoovering up every possible chance to preach that I could. Children's Church? Check. Youth group? Check. Nursing homes? Check. Street corners? Check. Church bus rides on the way home? Check. I preached at the drop of a hat and carried a hat with me everywhere.

In music and sports, we call this practice. In the speaking arena, we do not for the simple reason that the people sitting in front of you are real people. But the effects are quite similar. It is impossible to improve in any area solely by watching other people do it. You have to get out there and do it yourself.

The second suggestion sounds immediately contradictory, yet it is not. Find a good teacher or two and watch everything they do. When you have a question – and always come up with a question – pull them aside and bounce it off of them. Do this often enough, and you will have developed a mentor, someone who will pour into you all they know. As I have just made clear, this alone is not sufficient. But if you pair the second with the first, I can almost guarantee that your progress will be rapid.

Third, commit yourself to a course of continuing education. This can be as formal as enrolling in an actual class on teaching or as informal as reading a book about it. (Hey, I wonder where we could find a good book? <grin> ) If books are not your thing, put your earbuds in and dial in a podcast about teaching. YouTube University can be an absolute waste of time, but the amount of good content on there is staggering. Find some. Watch some. Try some of what you see in your class.

The point here is not the particular means of educating yourself but rather the importance of the decision to always be learning. The vast majority of Sunday School teachers plateau because they are satisfied with the status quo. Do they want a bigger class? If a few more came in, that would be fine, but there is no passion to see it grow. Do they want to see lives changed? Of course, but not at the cost of fasting and prayer and hours spent with that student one-on-one outside of class. Would they like to be a better teacher? Sure, if you could wave a magic wand and make it happen. Curiously enough, it never happens. Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh And intermeddleth with all wisdom. (Proverbs 18.1) To the extent you want to be a better teacher, you will be. To the extent you can live without it, you will not.

Lastly, I cannot close without again mentioning prayer. In prayer, we live by faith, depending on the Lord to help us. This pleases Him. If it is right to pray when we are trying to determine whether we should teach, it is absolutely right to pray once we have launched our frail craft upon the waters. Pray for the Lord to help you as you decide what to teach. Yield yourself to Him as you sit down to write your lesson. Take each student in your heart one at a time, and lift them to the Lord. Ask Him to bless them, help them, grow them, meet their needs, and move them to yield to the Spirit's work in their life. Speaking of the Holy Spirit, plead with Him to empower your teaching. Ask Him to give you a clear mind and a passionate heart as you teach. Ask Him for the heart of those young people. Park out in front of their house late at night and weep. While the tears roll down your cheeks, beg the Lord to raise up a generation that will love Him and serve Him and bring Him great glory.

Jesus was the best teacher the world has ever seen. The more time you spend with Him, the more like Him you will be.

If the Lord wants you to teach a Sunday School class, you should. Further, you can. And you can do it well. Tell Him yes, and you will never regret it.

 

 

 

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Sunday School?

 The Sunday School Teacher 4

Why do we have Sunday School? Why does it exist? Why is it a thing? If we cannot answer those questions, it goes a long way in explaining why so many churches are dropping it. Alternatively, we could ignore the questions and just holler more loudly that every church should have one. I find both of those approaches far from satisfactory. If you will allow me, I would like to give you answers to those questions that have helped me over the years.

           My favorite subject as a child in school was history. Decades later, it is still my favorite academic subject. History teaches us how to avoid mistakes that show up in each generation. In addition, by revealing how and why something began, we can trace the DNA and identify the underlying concepts that drive it in the modern day.

Robert Raikes' statue, Victorian Embankment
Gardens, London, England

Robert Raikes (1735-1811) was an 18th-century newspaper publisher. As a religiously minded humanitarian, Raikes' attention was drawn to the disastrous state of English prisons. After a tangle with a particularly unruly gang of boys on the rough side of Gloucester one Sunday afternoon in 1780, he came to think that crime was better prevented than prosecuted, and the best criminal reformation was to avoid producing criminals in the first place. This led directly to his desire to work with the boys running the streets in his city.

A life of learning led him to educate them as a means of improving their lives immediately and permanently. Yet many of those boys held full-time jobs Monday through Saturday. Ergo, Sunday was the best option. As a religious man, he instinctively understood that the Bible was the best textbook, as it best tells boys how to live. In some cases, he even had to teach them to read first before he could teach them the Bible. And teach them the Bible, he did. In his own words, "The children were to come after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve; they were then to go home and return at one; and after reading a lesson, they were to be conducted to Church. After Church, they were to be employed in repeating the catechism till after five, and then dismissed, with an injunction to go home without making a noise."

In this, Raikes found his pastor, Thomas Stock, a great encouragement and help. Together, they enlisted lay people as teachers for the rapidly growing group. After several years perfecting the program, he began to publicize Sunday School as a concept in his newspapers, and point to it as a potential solution for what had become an England-wide issue. Amongst other people, it caught John Wesley's attention. Latching on to it, he declaimed, "There must be a Sunday School wherever there is a Methodist society." By 1784, organized Sunday Schools enrolled 225,000 English children. Twenty years after Raikes' death in 1811, a statue to his memory was erected in London and financed by the gifts of 1.25 million British Sunday School students.

It was not long before the cousins across the pond noticed. William Elliott launched the first American Sunday School in 1785 in Oak Grove, Virginia. It spread rapidly up and down the Eastern seaboard. In each town, as a newly started Sunday School drew children from all kinds of churches, those churches, in turn, began their own Sunday School departments. By the early 1800s, the American Sunday School Union spearheaded a massive push to organize Sunday Schools all over the Mississippi watershed. They sent out eighty missionaries, involved such luminaries as Daniel Webster and Francis Scott Key, and circulated a million books in small libraries. To give one particular example, a little girl named Mary, attending a Sunday School in Illinois, wanted to get a star for bringing a visitor. She persuaded her father, Stephen Paxson, to attend. He came to Christ and was fired with a passion to establish Sunday Schools. Before the tale of his life was told, he had traveled 100,000 miles all over the Midwest, started 1,300 Sunday Schools, and was directly responsible for seeing 83,000 converts come to Christ. Between 1824 and 1874, 61,229 Sunday Schools were launched in the United States. Those Sunday Schools were being staffed by over 400,000 teachers and contained a cumulative attendance of 2.6 million children.

Sunday School Parade, Dubuque, Iowa
c 1900

As the 19th century drew to a close, American Sunday Schools were stronger than ever. The International Sunday School lesson was born, and entire curricula were circulated replete with homework assignments and grading systems. Enormous Sunday School conventions were held yearly. Sunday School parades marched down Main Street in many a town. Conservative estimates in 1884 reported 9 million children enrolled out of an entire United States population of 22 million under the age of fifteen. That is not quite one out of every two children in the country.

What happened? Because there certainly are not one out of every two American children attending Sunday School now. The short answer is liberalism happened. Just as it killed seminaries and through them, their denominations, it also killed Sunday Schools. As Methodists and Presbyterians and Congregationalists and Lutherans lost their theological moorings, their Sunday Schools died or turned from teaching the Word of God to an embrace of the social gospel and community activism. The great historic Protestant denominations withered just as Catholic immigration exploded. By the mid-20th century, fewer and fewer American children were being taught the Word of God.

Independent Baptists are not theologically perfect, but our movement is marked by a fervency for souls long missing in other religious expressions. Following World War II, Sunday School as a local church ministry experienced a resurgence, led by the giant independent Baptist megachurches of the era. Popularized by Elmer Towns, long associated with Jerry Falwell, men such as Lee Roberson, Jack Hyles, and John Rawlings organized massive churches primarily around the Sunday School. In the process, they elevated it again, rekindling a love for boys and girls in the hearts of churches all across the country.

As this is penned in 2025, the Sunday School is proving remarkably hard to kill. The contemporary church movement has largely abandoned it, but that movement has its own deep problems. Small groups as a concept are having a hot minute. I will discuss that in the following chapter. On the other hand, there are still hundreds of thousands of Sunday School classes meeting each Sunday morning all over the country. Indeed, the world, if you factor in growing independent Baptist missionary movements in Asia, Africa, and Central America.

We come back then to the question at the heart of this chapter. Why Sunday School? Well, it was founded to offer hopeless boys and girls the only trustworthy source of hope there is – a life built on Jesus Christ and the Word of God. The obvious follow-up question is, are there still hopeless boys and girls, children growing up without an understanding of the Gospel, without any biblical foundation?

To ask the question is to answer it. The need in our day is just as staggering as it was in Robert Raikes' England. In our generation, very few parents teach their children the Word of God. For most parents, it has never occurred to them to do so. They are unsaved themselves. If they are saved, they are often carnal and have little to no appetite to read and apply God's Word to their own life, let alone to their children. Other parents, a bit more spiritually mature, instinctively understand the need to teach their children, but do not know how to do so. Though they have a direct biblical responsibility to do it themselves (Ephesians 6.4), the only way they practically fulfil that instruction is to bring their children to church. Thus, if these children are not taught the Bible at church, they will not be taught it.

Additionally, in our generation, very few schools teach children the Word of God. In previous centuries, even public schools did so, and I could furnish whole swathes of evidence that they did so. But as American culture was hijacked by paganism via materialism in the 1950s and rock music in the 1960s, the Bible as a textbook was shoved out of the public school system. In 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court kicked prayer out of schools. In 1963, in Abington Township School District v. Schempp, the Supreme Court ruled that public reading of the Bible in schools was unconstitutional. In 1992, in Lee v. Weisman, the court prohibited clergy-led prayer at high school commencements. Lee v. Weisman, in turn, was the basis for Santa Fe ISD v. Doe in 2000, in which the Supreme Court extended the ban all the way to school-sanctioned student-led prayer at high school football games. If you want to learn about Jesus Christ from the Bible, you are not going to do it in an American public school. It is true that in some school districts, moments of silence are held daily. It is also true that in some school districts, classes about the Bible as literature are offered as electives. But in the main, if American public school children are not taught the Bible in church, they will not be taught it.

Why Sunday School, beloved? Because boys and girls by the millions need to hear about Jesus, need to be taught the Word of God. And it is as true now as it has ever been.