All in One Room?

Our Sunday School team here at Concordia Publishing House gets occasional requests for "all in one room" Sunday School material. We talked about it again last week. We are generally not inclined to pursue it. It's not that we are insensitive to the needs of small congregations. Small Sunday Schools face many challenges and we want to help.

But we are, first and foremost, sensitive to the needs of children. Preschoolers and sixth graders in the same class just doesn’t work very well. The learning opportunities for one end of the age spectrum or the other will be lost.

We have experimented with models that test the limits of age-appropriateness. Our 2013 summer material offered just two levels: non-readers and readers; it seems to have been well-accepted. Cross Explorations and Growing in Christ can be combined to serve three levels: Early Childhood, grades 1-3, and grades 4-6. These seem to be the “functional minimums” for effective Christian education that uses volunteer teachers in the setting common to most congregations. They are the minimums our Sunday School team would like to strive for.

We have decided to work instead to provide resources (free ones if possible) that can support the small Sunday School in emphasis, volunteer enlistment, and student recruitment. Too often "all in one room" is a last resort of a congregation that is not pursuing the better, but more difficult options of emphasizing Christian education, enlisting volunteers, and reaching out to unenrolled students. The better alternate is to accept the burden of small classes that still provide age-appropriate instruction for children.

What pushes congregations you know toward "all in one room"?

What help do you think congregations need to overcome the barriers to a more robust Sunday School?

God bless you as you teach His children His Word.