Huzzah for the Traditional Sunday School

The Sunday School Teacher 3

    In any honest examination of the modern Sunday School, one of the first things we notice is that the traditional Sunday School as a concept seems to be dying a slow death. Increasingly, churches of all types and sizes have shifted from the long-followed schedule – Sunday School followed by a morning worship service, chased later in the day by an evening worship service – to a more contemporary type of weekend with the same service being repeated multiple times. In this latter style, Sunday School got left on the chopping block. At the same time, such churches realized they needed a smaller teaching venue. Cue the massive rise of small groups.

I make no secret of the fact that I prefer the traditional Sunday School model over the more recently popular small group model. I intend to make just that argument in this chapter. It does not then follow that I am against the small group model. I am most definitely not. I have spent thousands of hours teaching in such settings, and I intend to continue to do so. And they have been highly beneficial hours.

I believe in the power of personal investment, in the power of time spent one-on-one or in slightly larger groups. For example, just last week I awarded a New Testament to a young man in our church whom I had trained how to witness. We completed that training together, sitting across a table, one hour a week for eight weeks. I have trained nearly a hundred soul winners over these years in the same manner. Our church practices discipleship in a similar manner. New Christians are paired with mature Christians and undertake a set of eight small-group Bible studies over a two-month period. I have done hundreds of these myself. Members are only added to our church after a meeting with me in a small group setting. Additionally, I have spent an enormous amount of time mentoring younger preachers in a similar setting, one-on-one at a table working through a book or concept or doctrine or practice essential to the Christian ministry. Indeed, I hope some will use this book in a similar manner, a mature teacher coming alongside an inexperienced one, helping them to grow into all they can be for the cause of Christ.

The small group model has some genuine strengths. It often increases participation and thus thought and personal ownership of thought between the learner and the teacher. Small groups help people to become involved and feel valued. They often do a better job of building relationships between students than the traditional Sunday School model does. Church plants can emerge from small groups. And when they are done right, a properly led small group can eliminate many, if not most, of the weaknesses inherent in the model.

If I am so obviously for it, how then can I be against it? I am not against it so much as I am against small groups replacing the model traditionally used in Sunday School – a teacher standing up before a class and taking them through a planned course of study. When you replace the traditional model entirely with small groups, you leave good stuff on the table. Some things are taught better in the conventional model. In fact, I would argue that most things are taught better.

Consider the broader educational implications for society. In modern American culture, a child progresses from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade over a thirteen-year span. He then often undertakes advanced studies at a college, university, or technical school for some years afterward as well. I may be mistaken in the following sentence, but I cannot think of a single example where all that education is conducted via a small group model. Are the secular equivalents of small groups used in schools, from kindergarten to a doctoral program? Yes. Are they used exclusively? Not on your life. In point of fact, the traditional model of a teacher delivering a lecture in a classroom is still found much more often than not. Why? Because there are some things that are taught more effectively via the traditional model.

I am not asking you to eliminate small groups. I am not on a crusade against the concept. I am asking you to realize the superiority of the traditional model in many instances, and to use small groups as a supplement to such classes rather than a replacement of them.

Having explained my point, let me now attempt to make it. To do so, I want to look at the negative risks one runs in a church context by shifting to small groups exclusively, and from this, highlight the unique strengths inherent in the traditional Sunday School model.

Small groups, by definition, cultivate commentary from everyone. While I believe a good Sunday School class includes much interaction, these two concepts are not the same. The former essentially places the opinion of the carnal Christian on par with the experienced perspective of the spiritual Christian. If a simple person (in the Proverbs sense of the term) comes to a passage of Scripture with a neutral mind, and thus hears two competing viewpoints in the discussion, he is left to choose for himself which one sounds good. This is problematic at best, and something you would find only rarely, if ever, in the traditional Sunday School model.

Put another way round, expressions of pooled ignorance are weaker than a carefully studied lesson in every context. I do not deny that small groups can be led well by carefully studied men or women, but the weakness inherent in a discussion format is that the thoughtful, prepared voice is put on par with all the voices around them. Leading a student to grasp a biblical truth always involves thought, but it does not always require discussion. Yet small groups only sometimes have the former, yet always have the latter.

The Bible is an authoritative book. It needs to be taught graciously but also with a sense of authority, an authority not inherent in the teacher but rather inherent in the Book because it is God's Word. If my chosen manner of transferring truth does not convey that authority, I am incorrect in how I handle the Word and in the inferences I leave in the mind of the listener. On the authority scale, the biblical emphasis begins with preaching, flows on to teaching, and finally descends to conversation and discussion. It is easiest to form the student's concept of doctrine and practice in the weakest of those three categories, easiest precisely because our culture has become so enamored of equalizing everyone's voice and pulling down anything that smacks of authority. But easier seldom means better.

In addition to the philosophical weaknesses inherent in the small group structure, any honest observer must also acknowledge the practical risk that any church faces in fostering small groups – a potential church split. The traditional Sunday School class model almost never splits a church; the small group model does so often, it has become cliché. In some sense, this is related to the authority concept discussed in the previous paragraph. The institution Christ founded to perpetuate His teaching in His absence was the church. Attempts to transfer scriptural truth on the edge of a church model and largely lacking church supervision are not wrong, per se; they are just wrong-headed. And if that sentence is too strong for you, roll it back in your mind and at least have the intellectual honesty to admit the risks run in a small group scenario.

"Sure, there are risks in the small group setup. I'll admit that. But there are just as many risks in the traditional Sunday School model."

I disagree. I do not disagree that Sunday School classes can and have often been poorly led, with the spiritual results negligible at best. In point of fact, this book exists in order to help combat that. But in the main, even a badly done Sunday School class still contains more potential for good and less risk of bad than the equivalently led small group. A poorly conducted Sunday School class is still held at church during a church service and is led by someone who carries the authority of the church and the Word of God. Attendance is taken, an unspoken practice which emphasizes the importance of the occasion.

Jack Williams, shortly before his graduation to
Glory earlier this year.

I can still remember each Sunday School teacher I had as a child. Mary Lou Tyree. Alice Reeves. Jack Williams. Joe Wetzl. Rick Bartel. Each one stood before me with an open Bible and taught a prepared lesson. Their intellectual, spiritual, and emotional capacities were different. Their ability to connect with me varied. Decades have passed since then, and the specific things they taught me have mostly faded from my memory. But their elevation of God's Word still rings in my heart, and their shining example of a love for God and His people still touches me all these years later.

I am not opposed to biblical discussions, nor to small groups gathering around a table to converse and learn about the things of the Lord. But few are the lives transformed by a discussion, while many are the lives changed by a teacher.

The traditional Sunday School model is still best.