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!

Choose Your Dates

The most visible change in Concordia's Sunday School materials starting this fall is the absence of assigned dates. In the long term, this is a boost to good stewardship, both for the customer and for the publisher.

With a little planning, there can be

• No unused lessons.
• Flexibility in scheduling.
• Fewer purchases of teacher materials.

You can:

• Teach the lessons in order. In the winter 2015 quarter, the Church will celebrate Christmas while SS is studying the events leading up to Christmas. If they start on the first week of September and teach every week, The Birth of Jesus will be taught on January 10th. The Sunday School can use the Church Year Worship Kit and Church Year Connections to connect to the church’s worship and simply say “We’ll study that event in a couple of weeks.”
• Skip a couple of lessons in the “before the Nativity”sequence. Most congregations probably skip a Sunday or two each year anyway.
• Start a couple of weeks early. School starts in many places in mid-August. If SS starts on August 23, the Christmas lesson would hit on 12/27.
• Save a couple of the Old Testament 2 lessons to be taught later.

Use a chart like the one below to inform teachers of the best dates to use the lessons. Watch this space for more about the changes you'll see in the fall.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!