The Best Material for Lutheran Congregations

The best Sunday School material for a congregation is material that is aligned with the beliefs and practices that the congregation confesses to be true and valuable. An LCMS congregation that uses material from a different denominational publisher will encounter teachings that are contrary to our understanding of Scripture, teachings that are deeply embedded in the central premise of each lesson and supported in each of that lesson's elements. These errors are not easily removed or covered over with a layer of correct language. The best material is material in which such errors do not exist.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Another Once-a-Year Sunday School Building Task

Here's another step you should take to build up your Sunday School, and other schools as well.

Once a year, you should take a close look at the Sunday School material offered by your denomination's publisher.

• If you don't use their material already, you should give them an opportunity to win you over.
• If you already use material from your publisher, you should check out other material that you don't currently use, and you should look closely at the material you do use, asking how this material could be improved to serve you even better.
• In either case, you should write your evaluative comments into a letter or e-mail and send it to the publisher.

Why should you do this?

• Your Sunday School will grow through the new resources you discover, the discussions you have about what's important in your material, and the conviction that your curriculum is the best you can find.
• Your publisher is part of your church family. They are your friends. They deserve your support if you are able to give it, and they deserve your help in improving their product.
• Things change. The material you checked out in 2006 or even last year has certainly changed, hopefully for the better, based in no small part on feedback just like what you will provide.
• If the publisher is missing the mark, they deserve an opportunity to improve.
• You will almost certainly see something great that you hadn't noticed before.
• The material they publish will teach the theology that your church believes and will avoid the errors your church body seeks to avoid.
• The improvements you suggest will help your congregation. They will also help hundreds of other congregations who have the same needs.

Will they listen?

• If your church publisher is Concordia Publishing House, they will!
• Your feedback will be acknowledged within twenty-four hours.
• Your suggestions will become part of our "Voice of the Customer" database, used to guide product development.
• While not every idea can be implemented immediately, every idea has impact.

CPH has samples of both Growing in Christ and Cross Explorations available through our Web site, cph.org/sundayschool. If you want an even boarder look, a full set of samples can be sent to you for examination. We want your business; even more, we want your feedback. Click the envelop icon on our Web page, write to sundayschool@cph.org, or write to me: tom.nummela@cph.org.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

What Are You Teaching? or What Are They Learning?

Too often Sunday School teachers and leaders focus too much of their attention on the question "What shall I teach?" than on the question "What will/did my students learn?"

The "teaching" question is admittedly an important question. It is the starting place. It is where so much can and does go wrong as churches make choices about curricula or teachers make choices about activities. Without a great plan for "what I will teach," any lesson has a low chance of success.

But the "learning" question is really the crux of the matter. If I don't take time to know, to assess, what my students learn, I may well have wasted my time as a teacher. The students may have been overwhelmed, bewildered, and clueless, unable to make sense of the material, but too polite to say so. They may have been bored to tears and tuned out completely.

How do I know what they've learned? One of the easiest ways is to ask them. Dialog is a time-honored and reliable method of assessment, but it is not the only one. "Draw me a picture." "Tell me the story." "Let's take this simple quiz." All are possibilities.

How do you know they learned what you intended to teach?

What is your most successful means of assessment?

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