Dear Sunday School,
Wow, where do I even begin? It’s been so long since we last talked. Fifteen years at least. I used to go see you in college on the Sundays I would go to church. There you were, faithful and true. No jumping around during the week for you. Like an old friend, you were always waiting for me in the same spot each week. At church, spooning right up against the service.
I could double dip.
I could knock out both at once. Church and Sunday School were the perfect team, like chocolate and peanut butter, frog and toad, Kim Kardashian and a professional athlete/Kanye.
Ahh, see that last joke was unnecessary. That was more The Soup and less the SCL. I probably wouldn’t have even made it if you were still around. But you’ve been gone for a while now.
We collectively decided you were old-fashioned. We felt like you were too restrictive, too old-school, the bad kind of old-school, not the good kind, like the neon colors that have zombie-crawled their way back from the 80s and are dominating the planet right now.
These days, we don’t want you, Sunday School.
We want to do life together.
To go through some seasons.
To form a community of communities that fellowship.
So we traded you in for small groups and home groups and connect groups and journey groups. We moved you to Tuesday night or every third Wednesday night or the fourth Thursday night divided by 14 with no remainder carried over. Now when I go see you, I have to find a babysitter. And a couch from IKEA and a plate of Costco one bite brownies for everyone that comes over.
And I love small groups. I think they’re awesome. In addition to forming some great friendships, if it doesn’t work out, you can trade in your group for a new one. That was hard with you Sunday School. If things didn’t work out, I didn’t have a whole lot of options. I couldn’t dump you, knowing that every Sunday morning I’d see you waiting for me right outside of church. But with a small group, I’m free to move around.
Let’s say the leader of my next group inexplicably owns a komodo dragon. And I don’t like komodo dragons. I’m more of a gila monster man. My daddy was a gila monster man. His daddy was a gila monster man. That’s just how I was raised. Well, I can just change groups.
But even though I like small groups, the more I think about it, the more I realize I miss you. I miss having the double feature of Sunday School and Church. I know it still exists. It’s still available at a ton of different churches. But, for 15 years, I haven’t seen you at the churches I attend.
Maybe we’ll run into each other at a potluck. We’ll shake hands, maybe talk about the old days. But then someone from my small group will come up, and I’ll have to leave you standing by a sad casserole, Sunday School.
It’s not you, it’s me.
Jon
Question:
Does your church have adult Sunday School?
We still have Sunday School, and I adore it. If we had to join an outside small group, I would never go. For an introvert like myself, the idea of meeting in someone’s home once a week makes me kind of nauseous.
Agreed, and well said.
I moved back to my hometown, and my church has adult Sunday school, but I hate it. Most of the classes are little more than a social club, rarely adding new members because they’re so cliquey. It’s also an unwritten law that if you’re single and over 23, you need to hurry up and find a mate before you are welcomed into a class of peers your age or older. Otherwise you must stop attending or awkwardly remain in the “college and career” class. At 27, I occasionally drop in on Sunday school only to be surrounded by 18-20 year old kids I used to babysit whose biggest moral dilemma is whether or not going to a club or having friends who drink is a sin. We start 20 minutes late and use these awful books from Lifeway that look like an iphone with random text boxes and bright colors. My teacher is a sweet woman of about 60, who is great, but married young, never drank or did anything un-baptist…bless her heart, she tries to relate, but there’s a disconnect. After an awkward 45min of being ignored and listening to a surface level discussion on a random Bible verse, I remember why I stopped coming. This is why I’m searching for jobs back where I went to college. My church there had over 50 “microchurches” – there was a group for everyone, regardless of marital status, age, gender, race, spiritual maturity, etc. Most didn’t meet Sundays, but we preferred that. There was real learning, purpose, accountability, etc. I miss it. I assume there are churches who do a goid job with Sunday school beyond childhood – I’ve just never seen it.
Jon, this is truly your best post ever. Thank you. We attend a PCA church with no Sunday School, but our two prior ones did. Small groups, no matter how cool the term (Journey, Life Group, Relevant, “doing life together”) just aren’t the same. Old fashioned is just fine. Last time I checked, the Bible was fairly old. And it wasn’t too worried about being cool and trendy either.
Exactly. If studying God’s Word is painful you’re not doing it right!
We recently moved and are looking for a new church home. Sunday school is a non negotiable for us. Have to have it. Also don’t like how Sunday school for our kids is during worship at most churches. My 4 yr old cried leaving church recently because she didn’t get to go to worship with us. Now we know & she’ll go with us and we’ll find a place that gives us Sunday school too.
We’ve debated time and time again at our church on if we should keep S.S. or ditch it…we always come back to the same conclusion….S.S. is a vital part of our church! In a small group (life groups, journeys, etc) are seemingly closed groups… Meaning if someone new comes in, it’s very difficult to get them “caught up”…our biggest issue with S.S. isn’t the attendance, it’s getting adults to “move up” to the next age group! There excuse is usually “we have bonded, and grown to love the youngest members of our class, and don’t want to leave them”… So every few years we reclassify each adult class, instead of insisting they move up…also with small groups it’s very difficult (at least in the south) to get a full commitment from parents/adults, to meet outside of church times due to their “busy” time schedules….
We have Sunday School…but the adult classes are not by ages-and-stages, they are by topics. The biggest class is the one that goes with the lectionary/sermon topics. There’s one women’s study on Sunday morning, I think, and maybe one or two others. We attend the most informal one, where most of the time is spent getting to know each other and sharing prayer requests. If we have time after prayer, we discuss a topic often inspired with what’s going on in the world. How Christianity intersects with our culture in various ways is a frequent discussion point.
Most churches I know who moved out of a SS model did so because it wasn’t helping people mature in faith, and/or because attendance kept dwindling.
I get missing it, reminiscing about it, and even grieving the loss and that it isn’t here anymore, but to me it was simply a method for discipleship. Small groups are a method too. And methods obviously change. I find I must say goodbye when they no longer work, and be committed to finding new ones. I also try to remember not to confuse methods with the purpose.
Finally, I try to remember that there is no problem-free solution for anything, especially making disciples and growing with others in our faith. When I only remember the good, and romaticize the past, I often miss what God is currently doing.
I often see people long for the past and miss what God is doing now, and I don’t want to be one of those people. If we want fellowship, teaching, accountability, etc we should make it happen with or without Sunday School, in my humble opinion.
I feel ya… Seen Sunday School out with ole heart throb Sunday Night Service …a vanilla scoop off a perfect Sundae.
Now it’s just a low cal Sundae. No Chocolate, No Sunday School and no delicious extra vanilla sermon sunset scoop.
I get it. Perhaps it just creates more moderation during the week for some orange sherbet small group or chocolate frozen yogurt at someone’s ikea perfect house during the week with perfect shaped Costco brownies.
We have Sunday School, and a Sunday evening service, and discipleship classes before that PM service, and a youth choir that rehearses on Sunday afternoons. It’s like 1985 without the big hair. But it all works out great for us.
Oh yeah, and we also have a Lord Supper table too, so there’s that.
I miss Sunday School. It makes it easier to get integrated into a church community – showing up at a strangers house isn’t easy when coming to a new church. I like the idea of a Sunday School being the launching point for small groups. That being said, however, it’d be hard for my kids to sit through two kids’ services.
I grew up in a non-denominational church that had no SS, just “Children’s Church”.
A recent article makes me wonder what I learned back then that I still need to unlearn?
http://beliefsoftheheart.com/2013/07/23/i-wonder-if-sunday-school-is-destroying-our-kids-2/
Hi Andrew,
I wrote that article, “Is Sunday School Destroying Our Kids” and I think the real issue for all of us it to continue to remember grace. Not cheap grace, real grace, the grace that has the courage to admit all our faults, and the hope to admit his great love.
Thanks for the share.
Right now, Adult SS is the only thing keeping us at our current church. (and my husband is a deacon.) Our teacher is a wonderful man with a real heart for God. You can tell he puts tons of time and effort into studying for his lessons and we are all expected to interact. We are Independent Baptists and the so-called “worship” service is one agonizing hour of my husband and I pinching and nudging each other to stay awake until the bitter end. You’re asking yourself “Then why do they stay there?” Because we’re praying for better days ahead and for the love of our Sunday School teacher.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE SUNDAY SCHOOL! ALWAYS HAVE & ALWAYS WILL. I LOVE LOVE LOVE TEACHING SUNDAY SCHOOL! I TEACH 4 YEAR OLDS NOW & WE HAVE SO MUCH FUN LEARNING ABOUT THE BIBLE AND JESUS AND GOD. IF YOU ARE BORED IN YOUR CLASS, TRY TEACHING CHILDREN. IT HAS HELPED ME STUDY MORE AND LEARN MORE WHEN I PREPARE THE LESSON AND IT IS SO AWESOME HOW CHILDREN LOVE THE BIBLE STORIES. I AM EXCITED EVERY SUNDAY TO BE WITH MY LITTLE FRIENDS AND BIG FRIENDS AT CHURCH AND SUNDAY SCHOOL!