What Is at the Center?

Why do some folks take so much time choosing a treat from a box of chocolates?

It's because it's all about the center, the heart, the core, the inside. We want the center to be the very best among the many choices in the box.

Sunday School lessons are also about the center! What the lesson is designed to teach! Everything else either supports the central truth of the lesson, or it is window dressing.

But I heard it again this week, that some folks actually don't care about the center of the lessons in the material they purchase for Sunday School. "It's easier to fix the theology than to add the window dressing!" Forgive me for being blunt, but that's not my experience.

If the center of the lesson, the theological point that it intends to teach, is wrong, everything essential in the lesson will be wrong as well. The introduction will introduce the error. The discussion questions will draw out the error. The activities, if they are chosen carefully, will continue to teach the error.

A moralistic lesson with a kernel of Gospel tacked on will still be, at its heart, a moralistic lesson. Unless, of course, the lesson was all window dressing in the first place.

A Sunday School teacher has twenty, or perhaps thirty, opportunities a year to teach a child about the saving truth of the Gospel, which God shares with us in Word and Sacrament. I challenge you to make each of the opportunities count. Don't settle for material that is not centered in the Gospel.

Thanks for all you do to teach God's children His saving Word!