As the Twig Is Bent, So Grows the Tree

A question for the parents in your congregation: "Where do you want your children to be, spiritually speaking, when they are young adults?"

• Worshiping regularly in an orthodox church?
• Growing in God's Word?
• Having daily devoted time?
• Serving others regularly and joyfully?

The follow-up question is obvious: "What are you doing now to fulfill those dreams for your children?"

• Are you bringing them to worship every Sunday? (This is where they will learn to worship.)
• Are you attending Sunday School as a family? (The parents' example is paramount.)
• Do you lead them in devotions daily?
• Does your family serve together to benefit others in your church, neighborhood, and larger community?

Yes, there is a certain amount of Law here, for God's Word shows us how to live our lives in a way that keeps us free from sin and temptation and close to the Means of Grace, God's Word and Sacraments.

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree! Too many parents begin to show concern for their children in the teenage years, as the child begins to grow more independent (as children must) and the parents' influence wanes. Now is the time to build life-long habits of worship, study, and daily devotion.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Why Have a Sunday School?

I really wanted to title this blog post "Get Rid of Your Sunday School, if . . . !" And as you see from the rest of this post, the "if" is really important and I certainly did not want the casual reader to take away the wrong message. Because, while I can imagine a congregation that would not need a Sunday School to assist in its mission, I have never "met" one.

But, if in your congregation . . .

• children are fully integrated into the worship service,
• families faithfully and frequently attend worship and receive the Lord's Supper,
• students attend a Lutheran Day School,
• parents have placed the Holy Scriptures into the hands of their children and provide daily family devoted time,
• children have a ready understanding of the salvation narrative, the basic accounts of the Bible, Luther's Small Catechism, and spend time each day in increasing that knowledge,
• parents regularly and comfortably discuss God's Word and its impact on their faith and daily life,

. . . then perhaps a Sunday School is not crucial.

On the other hand, what could it hurt?

God bless you for providing weekly opportunities for God's children to study 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!

Making the Most of Lectionary Ties

Do you use Sunday School material from Concordia Publishing House? Do you use the three-year lectionary outlined in the Lutheran Service Book? Then you probably have noticed that this is one of the quarters when the Sunday School lessons and the Gospel accounts read in the Divine Service line up rather nicely. This Sunday, for example, the Gospel reading and the Sunday School text are identical: Matthew 4:12-15, Jesus calls His first disciples.

This is nice because teachers and parents can call a child's attention to the parallel texts. You can use the church bulletin in your classroom or parents can use the Sunday School leaflet at appropriate points in the church service. Later in the day on Sunday the family can review the Bible account from a base of knowledge, discuss it together, and enjoy sharing what was learned. If you're lucky, your church is using the "Explore More" cards that were designed initially for use with the Cross Explorations curriculum, but available for use with Growing in Christ as well. These cards provide activities and discussion starters to help families maximize their time together.

The last four weeks of this winter set of lessons present a bit more of a challenge. The Gospel lesson each week is a portion of Jesus' "sermon on the mount," from Matthew 5. The Sunday School lessons may not, at first, seem to relate.

But they do! It would be tough for even the most creative teacher to teach what is essentially the same narrative, the occasion of Jesus' sermon on the shore of Galilee, four weeks in a row. However, the concepts about which Jesus teaches in each week's installment of this important chapter of the Bible are expanded on in Sunday School by studying a related Bible narrative.

Children learn what it means to be blessed (Matthew 5:1-12) by studying Jesus' blessing of Zacchaeus. They learn what it means to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-20) by studying the work and resurrection of Dorcas. They learn an alternative to anger (Matthew 5:21-37) by exploring Paul's letter about Onesimus. And they learn about dealing with enemies (Matthew 5:38-48) by seeing how God and Ananias care for Saul.

Make of point of teaching these worship connections in the lessons ahead. Your students will be glad you did!

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Let's Sing?

Do your Sunday School children sing? Your preschoolers? Your elementary students? Your junior and senior high students?

What do they sing? Hymns? Popular Contemporary Christian Music songs?

To what style of music do they respond? Live piano accompaniment? Live praise band? Full-production recorded songs? With vocals or just accompaniment tracks?

I'd love to really hear your answers to those questions, but I expect I'll have to do a survey to really get the answers. It is enough if I can get you thinking.

The Lutheran Christian congregation spends a lot of time in worship singing! Garrison Keillor says it is one of the things Lutherans do best. He claims Lutherans are trained from birth to sing hymns in four parts.

There was a time when the epitome of Lutheran worship experience was accompanied by pipe organ. My guess is this may no longer be the case.

Thesis: One goal of a child's Sunday School experience should be to prepare the child to enjoy full participation in the worship of the congregation as an adult. (Note the emphasis on enjoy.)

So . . . think about these things:

• Are your congregation's children in worship each week with their parents? If so, they are learning how adults worship and growing into that practice. How can you help them?
• Is the musical experience the children have in Sunday School (1) similar to, (2) complementary to, or (3) distinctly different from the worship experience they will have as adults? If you pick door number three, how will they ever make the transition? Are they going to enjoy full participation in worship as adults?

How you choose to do music and singing in your Sunday School will have an impact on the future worship life of your congregation.

God bless you as you teach His children to sing!

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!

Reformation and Other Movable Festivals

The movable festivals of the Church Year present a challenge for a publisher of Sunday School materials. It is difficult to know what the customer is going to encounter in his or her worship service or what they would prefer in the Sunday School lesson that week.

How much should Sunday School try to do with Reformation Sunday or All Saints' Sunday? Do we note these observances in the opening or closing worship times? Incorporate them into the body of the lesson?

Although the hymnal (Lutheran Service Book) recommends marking the principal feasts* only when they fall on Sunday, local custom prevails, and many churches (and our every-Sunday bulletin products at CPH) use the Reformation and All Saints' pericopes on the last Sunday of October and first Sunday of November respectively.

What is your preference? Should we teach a Reformation Sunday School lesson each year?

*Principal feasts generally are those related to related to the life of Christ (Circumcision and Name of Jesus, Purification of Mary and Presentation of our Lord, Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity of John the Baptist, St. Michael's and All Angels, and All Saints' Day).

Music in Sunday School

I've had several discussions recently with fellow editors at CPH about the role of music in Sunday School and what resources congregations need in this area. So I'm bold in this post to offer a couple of comments and then ask a few questions.

Music Is One of God's Gifts
Music is mentioned throughout Scripture, from Genesis (4:21, Jubal, "father of all those who play the lyre and pipe") to Revelation (5:9, "And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are You . . ."). Paul writes some of my favorite words in Ephesians 5:19: "Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and make melody to the Lord with your heart." God wants us to sing!

Music Teachs the Faith
Martin Luther, and scores of church leaders who came before and after him, recognized the power of music as a tool for teaching the Christian faith. Among his nearly 30 hymns, Luther included several intended to teach the six chief parts of the Small Catechism.

Music Is Integral to Worship
It is hard for me to imagine a worship service without music, and, for me, the sung liturgy and heritage of hymns in the Lutheran Church are some of its great treasures.

It makes sense then for us to use and teach music in Sunday School. So let me ask a few questions.

What is the connection between Sunday School music and worship music in your congregation?

Where will the next generation of Lutheran Christians learn the great hymns of faith? Will they?

What style of music to you prefer to use in your Sunday School? Why?

What music resources are your looking for to use in Sunday School? (I'd really love foryou to tell me about this. I'm in an improved position to address this kind of need.)

Blessings as you teach God's children His Word!

Callahan's Third Key Applied to Sunday School

A few weeks ago, I began reviewing (in between other posts), Kennon Callahan's Twelve Keys to an Effective Church, and applying them to Sunday School. These keys, taken together, provide a great tool for renewed effort toward excellence.

Callahan's Third Key is "corporate, dynamic worship" (his word order and punctuation, not mine). Worship is a primary activity for the Church; it plays a lesser role within the 60 to 75 minutes most congregation's have for Sunday School. And the connection between Sunday School and worship is extremely important as well. Let's look briefly at each.

The Congregation's Worship
The vitality of the congregation's worship affects the health and growth of the congregation and indirectly the health and growth of the Sunday School as well, especially when a worshiping congregation that welcomes and involves children in the Divine Service. You can read more about my thoughts in a previous post by clicking here.

Worship in the Sunday School
Worship plays two important roles within the context of the Sunday School itself. It is a worship opportunity, and it is an educational opportunity.

Opening and closing devotions, whether done as an individual class or larger segment of the Sunday School provide unique opportunities for children to experience worship that is tailored to their specific levels of development, reading ability, and interest. Child-friendly hymns and songs, opportunity for individual prayer concerns to be addressed, and even object lessons or devotional thoughts targeted for children are all possible in a much greater degree than in the Divine Service.

What resources do you find most helpful in classroom devotions or department-wide worship? What resources should your publishing house be providing?

These opening and closing devotions are also an important, even vital, opportunity to teach the elements of corporate worship to children. We can explain the vocabulary used in the parts of the liturgy. We can teach the refrains, such as the Alleluia and Verse, that come and go so quickly in the service that some children are "left in the dust." We can help children memorize the creed and the Lord's Prayer so that their participation in the worship can be more meaningful. We can teach them how to follow the hymn texts from one staff of music to the next in the hymnal. In these ways and more, we can ensure that children grow into full participation in the congregation's worship.

How well does your curriculum integrate the elements of the Divine Service (hymns and liturgy) into classroom/Sunday School worship? What more would you like to see?

Time spend in Sunday School preparing children for and leading them in worship is not wasted. It is excellent Christian education!

God bless you as you teach God's Word (in liturgy and song) to His children.

Integrating Sunday School and Worship

A while back I offered some criteria for excellent Sunday School materials (see it here). Included was the suggestion that such material "integrate with the congregation's worship." What does that mean?

I believe that children of any age have a place not only in Sunday School and Christian education, but also in the Divine Service. The congregation needs to understand that worship is for children as well as adults, and children should feel welcome and included in the congregation's worship. While it's true that a restless child may occasionally need to be taken out of the sanctuary briefly during worship, their complete absence troubles me. It makes me wonder at what age they are then expected to return?

An excellent Sunday School curriculum will support and equip families to worship together. It will teach children about the elements of the Divine Service, teach and use the hymns that the congregation sings, and connect to the lessons and sermons that the children will hear in the service. It will cause children to say in worship, "We sang/heard/learned about that in Sunday School!" And it will cause children in Sunday School to say, "We sang/heard/learned about that in church!"

CPH's Growing in Christ Sunday School material have several features that promote this kind of synergy. More than two-thirds of the Bible accounts taught in Sunday School are drawn from the Gospel readings or liturgical occasions used by congregations following the three-year lectionary. Since GiC is a unified curriculum, that means that the family will share many connections in worship and Sunday School that can inform their discussion and devotion throughout the week. Elements of the liturgy are often taught in the curriculum, including many "Liturgy Connections" that are introduced in each quarter. Hymns are suggested for each lesson that come from the standard repertoire of a congregation.

How does your congregation encourage (or hinder) the participation of children in worship?

How does your Sunday School support and integrate with the congregation's worship?