Sharing the Gospel
Without a doubt, the first reason for having a solid Sunday School in your congregation is to share the Gospel. The Bible tells the good news that Jesus has earned forgiveness for our sins and that God offers that forgiveness to us as a free gift through faith in Christ. That's what we are about on Sunday mornings, teaching God's children His Word.
That message of salvation, though, unfolds in a truly fascinating narrative about the creation and protection of a people who are called to be faithful to God, who is always faithful to them. The students you teach will benefit from studying the entire Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, and the countless ways in which they reveal God's love for us in Jesus Christ.
How Many Bible Stories Are There?
So, how many Bible lessons are there that a child should learn? The Growing in Christ Sunday School material published by Concordia Publishing House offers about 175 different Bible lessons, counting those taught in the summer quarters. About forty percent of these come from the Old Testament and sixty percent from the New: not a particularly fair treatment of the Old Testament given is larger size, but more Old Testament accounts than any previous Sunday School curriculum CPH has published. The curriculum repeats itself on a cycle of about three years (that gets a little complicated, because New Testament accounts are repeated more frequently than Old Testament ones). This deliberate repetition of lessons allows a student to study a Bible story about three times in the course of childhood, with a fresh, age-level appropriate look at that text in each repetition.
It would be possible, of course, to teach a significantly higher number of accounts from the Bible; there are certainly many to choose from that are not covered in the current scope and sequence, or that are covered with only broad strokes.
Too Many? Too Few?
On the other extreme, a model of Sunday School gaining some attention these days---Workshop Rotation---teaches just one Bible account every month or so, rotating the students through several different hour-long workshops. Just ten or twelve Bible accounts are studied each year, though one assumes that a given set of lessons might not be repeated again for many years. I am sceptical about this approach, because of the fewer number of lessons taught among other reasons (that's fodder for another post to this blog, I suppose).
So, I ask: what do you think?
What is the ideal number of lessons in a Sunday School curriculum?
How often should lessons be repeated?
What will contribute best to the biblical literacy of children?
What choices would you make, if your could, as you teach God's children His Word?
I was just googling to see what I could find. Is there a CPH version of something like this that lists what stories are all covered?
ReplyDeleteWhen thinking about overall planning purposes, I would think it would be ideal if one had a list and said, these are the Bible stories I want kids that go through our program to know. As someone who's not actually doing this at our church, I don't know whether it's thought about or not, but for instance when the kids reach confirmation, you can either assume some of this stuff and then use confirmation to teach more doctrinal stuff or, if your kids haven't yet learned it, you obviously have to go back and do the quick-short-comprehensive review!
Mike, there is a Sunday School scope and sequence. It is a bit difficult to find on line, so I will send it directly. Combined with accountable reading tests like Pam Nummela's biblequizzesonline.com Web site, it could fill the gap for kids who do not attend Sunday School every Sunday. Tom
ReplyDelete