Everyday Faith Family Pages---A Free Resource

Are you looking for ways to help families connect to God's Word? Check out this free weekly resource from CPH: Everyday Faith Family Pages. (Click the title to go find these downloadable PDFs.) Pages for the current unit for Growing in Christ, New Testament 1, are located at the bottom of the page.

Each page is designed to engage parents and families in concepts related to that week's Sunday School lesson. They are organized to match our Concordia Sunday School scope and sequence, but they can be used in any congregation with any family. They don't rely on Sunday School content, and they don't assume Sunday School attendance. You can print and distribute these pages to students as a take-home resource, or you can attach them to a email to every family. Use these pages to . . .

• Inform parents of what their children are learning in Sunday School.
• Stimulate faith discussions in the home.
• Encourage families that don't currently attend Sunday School.

Try this resource today! Your families will be glad you did.

Thanks for teaching God's children His Word!

Devoted Time

Here's a message your families might benefit from hearing, about the blessing of "devoted time": family devotions.

CPH has prepared a short, encouraging video. You can access it HERE.

Feel free to share this link with others. You can also access the video by browsing to YouTube.com and searching for the video on the Concordia Publishing House channel. Search for "Concordia Publishing House family devotions."

God bless your families as they engage His children with His Word.

Is There Value in Sunday School?

Suppose your congregation was a perfect congregation.

• Your members attend church every Sunday.
• Your pastor preaches excellent sermons that reach old and young people equally well.
• Your congregation supports a day school in which all eligible children are enrolled.
• Your parents are comfortable in their roles as the primary influencers of their children's spiritual life and growth and engage in daily family devotions and faith conversations with their children.
• Young and old members alike are avid readers of the Bible and do so daily.

Would there be any point in having a Sunday School?

I would argue that even in that amazing congregation, Sunday School would be a valuable opportunity for all families. It would provide:

• age-appropriate interaction and instruction for each child
• comprehensive coverage of the entire scope of the salvation narrative
• a place to build relationships with Christian peers
• outreach opportunities for friends and others from the community
• another chance to hear the blessed Gospel

Of course, your congregation and my congregation fall woefully short of that perfect standard. Sunday School then helps fill the gaps. It is surely worth every moment, and every penny, we invest in it.

God bless you as you provide opportunities for His children to study His Word!

Do You Want a Better Sunday School?

There are no shortcuts. Whether you have a large congregation or a small one, having a good Sunday School is hard work. The payoff, of course, is worth it . . . bringing children to Jesus through His Word.

Sunday School is not about

• fun
• entertainment
• the latest material
• going easy on the church budget

Sunday School is about

• seeing Jesus
• teaching Law and Gospel
• building relationships
• partnering with parents

Here are five steps toward a better Sunday School:

1. Talk with your pastor. Invite him to encourage families to participate in Sunday from the pulpit, regularly.
2. Make a list of children who are not attending Sunday School.
3. Get to know those families yourself.
4. Find bridge families, people you know who know some who do not yet attend. Encourage them to support marginal families in their church connections.
5. Send sample Sunday School materials to families who are not attending Sunday School or who attend infrequently. Encourage them to use the materials at home and remind them that there is a place for them in Sunday School each week.

God bless you as you teach His children His word!

Building Up Your Sunday School

Who would not love to have more children attending Sunday School each week?

One powerful tool is a strong adult Bible study program, one that addresses the needs and matches the learning styles of parents with children. It will have three immediate benefits.

In the first place, if the parents are in Bible class, so will the children be in Sunday School.

Second, the example of the parents in valuing lifelong Christian education will impact the children in very positive ways.

Third, if parents join their children in study during the Sunday School hour, the children will then join the parents for worship, which, sad to say, is not always the case in our churches these days.

Good things happen when children learn to value weekly opportunities for worship and Christian education. God promises this will be so!

God bless you as you teach His children, and their parents, His Word!

Calling All Dads!

An interesting conversation with a pastor this morning (thanks, Pastor Frank Zimmerman) sparks this brief post.

Fathers have both a spiritual responsibility as head of the family and an extraordinary amount of influence over the future engagement their children will have with the Church. Having Dad invested and active in the Church and in the spiritual formation of his children will pay incredible dividends.

So, says Pastor Zimmerman, "Dads, step up!" He wants dads teaching the Sunday School classes in his congregations.

I think it's a great idea! Dad will grow in his own biblical knowledge, set a blessed example for his children, impact children from other families, and learn skills that will help in family faith discussions through the week. It really is a "win, win" situation.

God bless you, Dad, as you teach God's children His Word!

Thanks!

Thank You, God, for . . .

• Thousands of volunteers who teach Sunday School each week.
• Parents who bring their children to church each Sunday for worship and Bible study.
• Parents who teach the Christian faith to their children as part of their daily family routine.
• Dorothy and Carl Felten, neighbors who reached out to my brother and me during our childhood to make sure we had the opportunity to attend Sunday School. Dorothy taught my Sunday School class for at least five years in a row; Carl provided transportation and regular incentives to keep us coming back (yea for Dairy Queen!).

Thanks, God, for the blessing of teaching Your children Your Word.

What You Are Is What You Were When You Were Ten

More years ago than I care to admit, I was challenged (near the end of a 16mm HR training film) to reflect on the impact that my life at age ten had on my "after age ten" existence. The premise of the film was that a lot of our attitudes, beliefs, and practices are imprinted at about age ten. From that time on, we don't change all that much.

Maybe that's a stretch, but as I hear it today, it has a ring of truth, at least in matters of spiritual formation. A child's attitudes about church and Sunday School, his or her beliefs about what God is like and what life with God is all about, and devotional and worship disciplines at age ten may predict where that child will be in ten, twenty, or fifty years later.

What if this is true? What would you like that ten-year-old child to be hearing, learning, and experiencing?

• Opportunities for service in the church and community?
• Sunday School lessons filled with forgiveness for sin and assurance of God's love and mercy?
• Weekly participation in worship and Sunday School as a family?

What was life like for you at age ten?

What specific attitudes, beliefs, and practices would you like to imprint on the children you teach?

God bless you as you teach His children (and their families) His Word!

Sunday School and the Family

The Bible assigns parents the responsibility for the spiritual nurture of their children (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Ephesians 6:4). I can envision a world where parents taught God's Word to their children from their earliest days with such dedication and consistency that Sunday School lessons were unnecessary. That's not the world I see, however.

Instead, I find that families today benefit from age-appropriate Christian education for their children. Call me old-fashioned, but I suspect that the tradition of "graded" (that is "separated into grades") Sunday School classes and intergenerational (all ages together) worship that has served our church body for a century or more did not come about by accident. It is a good thing.

A speaker at the recent conference of the National Association of [LCMS] DCEs applauded the "new" pattern in a large SoCal non-denominational megachurch of once a quarter having all age groups set aside their age-segregated worship in order to worship together. (I was disappointed that she didn't know her audience better.) And I've seen congregations, and at one time served one, where at least occasionally all ages would join together for intergenerational Sunday School experiences.

I think intergenerational Sunday School lessons can be wonderful, but I know they take a lot of work; they are not very common; and I don't get very many requests for material to serve that model. I think the traditional Sunday School has relevance and purpose.

But I would encourage you to think about how your church supports families in their role as the primary teachers of the faith.

What resources do you provide so that parents can do their job well? (Such as the Story Bible or My Devotions)

How clearly do you articulate the expectation that parents will teach their children about the Christian faith at home?

What training do you provide to assist parents in this responsibility? What more could you do?

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