Hallmarks of a Great Curriculum NOT!

I was asked recently to identify my personal choices for the five most significant characteristics of the Growing in Christ Sunday School curriculum. Further into this post, I plan to comment briefly on some items that I did not include and why.

The exercise was a helpful one and one I suspect Sunday School leaders should be asking themselves:
What characteristics do you think are important for a Sunday School curriculum? What things should define the material we use to teach the next generation of God's children His Word?

Here are the five I chose:
1. Christ-centered
2. Lutheran
3. Unified
4. Integrates with the congregation's worship
5. Age-appropriate
I will expand on each of these characteristics in future posts to this blog.

But let me return to the antithesis. What characteristics are not included?

Fun? No, I am not committed to insuring that Sunday School is boring for children. It's a sin to bore children with God's Word. But fun is not the goal for which I think we should strive, just a by-product of the interaction between teacher, student, and Word that are the essence of the Sunday School experience.
Flash? The reality of the publishing experience makes it difficult to be trendy and cool in the material we produce. We invest millions of dollars in curricula that will serve the Church for many years. Our goal is an abiding relevance not any passing fad.
Technology? CPH wants to be on the cutting edge, but not the bleeding edge, here. I see many intriguing applications of digital media that the Church could find tremendously helpful in our mission to share Christ with the nations. And I know that some churches have embraced technology in a big way. But our core constituents are not there yet, not by a long shot. CPH is diligently seeking ways to better serve those who are embracing technology, but we are committed to serving all our customers.
Easy to prepare? This is a tough one for me. I could easily buy in to this one, because I know that many, many teachers step into class each week with a bare minimum of advance preparation. The era of weekly teachers' meetings and teacher training conferences, workshops, courses, and certificates seems to have gone the way of Mayberry RFD. But I know that the quality of the classroom experience goes up exponentially with the amount of time spend in preparation. I'm not ready yet to let the Sunday School teacher off the hook. At CPH, we continue to seek ways to make our teacher materials as accessible as possible, while providing solid biblical teaching each week at all levels.

Did you make your own list? Are you willing to share?

Thanks to all who teach God's children His Word!