Help! CPH Changed My Sunday School Material!

"The lessons no longer align with the Church Year!"
"They forgot the Easter lesson!"
"No wonder! They forgot to put dates on the lessons."

Yep. CPH changed things up in September 2015, and our customers are beginning to notice. Lessons are now organized into 9 themed units, four Old Testament and for New Testament, and the 13 lessons in each unit are organized chronologically. There are no dates to be found. And each unit as it is published will be stocked in the warehouse for purchase in any quarter of the year.

Would you like to teach the Bible in your Sunday School chronologically from Genesis to Revelation? Starting with fall 2016 that becomes a possibility.

Why? It turns out that the most expensive way to publish Sunday School material is by pegging it to the liturgical calendar, which then requires that every quarter of material be re-edited every year to accommodate the shifting calendar. As most Sunday Schools decline and congregational budgets get tighter, it was getting harder and harder to provide material without large increases in prices.

There are some major positives that result from this change.

• Congregations have greater flexibility to start the fall quarter on a date other than the first Sunday in September.
• They can choose the order in which to teach the nine units.
• They can save teaching material and unused student material to use in two or three years when that unit comes up again. The material will not change, so everything will still work together.
• They can stretch out each quarter if there is no Sunday School due to weather, or holidays, or other special occasions.

A couple of things become a little harder:

• It is harder to keep all teachers on the same page. (We have provided several tools for noting when lessons are scheduled by your congregation to be taught, but someone needs to decide those dates and publish them to all the teachers.)
• It is harder to teach children about the Church Year. Church Year Connections is a new annual resource that provides material for opening worship (either with the entire Sunday School or in your classroom) that is focused on the current Sunday of the Church Year. A feature of this resource is a complete set of "Teaching Points for Children" that can be woven into your lessons.
• Each winter and spring, CPH will provide free lessons for Christmas and Easter (more savings!) to supplement the material you purchased.

CPH understands that after 30 years of dated Sunday School material, this change will take some getting used to. We apologize for your frustration. Please know that some things have NOT changed.

• The Gospel of Jesus Christ is still central to every single lesson.
• Law and Gospel are correctly taught at all levels.
• The Small Catechism and hymnal are integrated into our curricula.
• The Bible is accurately taught through the text and images in every lesson.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Are You Ready for Christmas?

Those who use Concordia Publishing House Sunday School material will notice that in our first undated New Testament unit, we now have six lessons ramping up to the Nativity. Previous editions of these materials usually had only four. Taught in sequence starting from the first Sunday in December, the "Christmas" lesson will land in the middle of January. I can hear you already: "What were they thinking?!"

Here's the scoop! New Testament 1, God Sends His Son to Save Us, is the only unit of our material that teaches about this early portion of Jesus' life. Teaching the whole narrative involves these six distinct events, each of which we want our children to study and know. In other Decembers, other portions of Jesus' life and ministry will be studied. (Free Christmas lessons will be provided online for churches that decide to interrupt the chronological series of lessons to insert a Christmas lesson.)

How can congregations accommodate this unusually long series of pre-Christmas and Christmas lessons? Here are some options:

• Teach the lessons in order. When the church celebrates Christmas in worship, remind the students that in Sunday School we will get there eventually, but let them know there is important stuff to learn before they study the Nativity itself.
• Skip two or three lessons among those before Christmas. Return to them after studying the Christmas lesson, or not.
• Skip two or three lessons from the Old Testament 2 unit in November. Save them to be taught at the end of the spring quarter or at the end of the summer before beginning the Old Testament 3 unit.

Our undated Sunday School lessons give congregations lots of options and, over time, may save congregations money as they stretch each unit over a couple more weeks or reuse saved material.

God's blessings as you teach His children His Word!