Have You Seen the NEW 'Happy Times'?

 

CPH's fun magazine for preschoolers and the adults to love them has undergone and thorough, thoughtful revision.

Each issue has a topic, a recipe, an action poem, a coloring page, a craft, one of God's amazing creatures, and the faith talk parents and teachers can use to share the Gospel with their children.

Click here to get more information and see a sample issue online.

Share this great news with Sunday School parents, preschool and daycare families, grandparents . . . anyone who loves preschoolers!

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Are You Ready for Christmas?

If Sunday School has kicked off the fall quarter of lessons, can the children's Christmas service be far behind?

Here are some basics steps to take as you work toward Christmas!

Set a date! (Or dates!) My congregation often has scheduled two Sunday School Christmas presentations, one early on Christmas Eve and one on the Sunday before schools let out for Christmas break. This allowed families who were headed out of town for Christmas to participate. Curiously, the two services are nearly identical in size.

Select a program. This year CPH is releasing another service based on a favorite Christmas hymn, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." You can get details here.

Prepare scripts and rehearsal CDs. Share the scripts and CDs with your teachers to distribute in class. With the publisher's permission, prepare a CD of songs the children should practice and send a copy home with each student or with the oldest child in each family. (CPH Christmas programs come with permission to duplicate such a CD for practice at home.)

Schedule rehearsal time. Work several weeks in advance and encourage your teachers not to spend too much class time on this project. Teaching the Gospel in Sunday School certainly comes first. Alert parents to ways their children can prepare at home.

Delegate key tasks. Volunteers are usually willing to tackle limited, one-time projects like duplicating material, arranging costumes, rounding up props, preparing banners or other visual aids, and helping supervise the children at rehearsals and presentations.

Publicize the event. Make sure that parents, grandparents, and congregation members know the dates and times of the presentations.

Conduct dress rehearsals. One or two Saturdays before the presentation, bring the children together for rehearsal and to run through the presentation. When we have two presentations, we would schedule two back-to-back rehearsals, one for each service.

Why go to all this trouble, you may ask? The annual children's Christmas service is an opportunity to teach one of the central events of Scripture in an event that engages visual, verbal, musical, and kinetic learners. It teaches the story of salvation. It teaches about the Church Year. It also gives your children an opportunity to share the Gospel with their families, friends, congregation, and community.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

A Good Start on Discipline

Next Sunday many Sunday School teachers will be teaching a new class of students for the first time.

Although discipline strategies will differ by age level and local custom, here are five things that will help most teachers enjoy a good start and maintain a happy classroom environment with their new class.

1. Prepare thoroughly. It can be difficult at times to set sufficient time aside for preparing for your class each week, but it's a fact that being prepared heads off a world of discipline problems. When the teacher is confident, not distracted with last-minute preparations, with less need to bury one's nose in the teacher guide, and knowing what comes next, the students have less opportunity to wander mentally or physically. Pay special attention to engaging presession activities for students as they gather, and prepare an interesting transition into the start of the lesson.

2. Be present early and always. The teacher should be the first one in the room, greeting the students and directing them into presession activities, not studying the teacher guide at the last minute or gathering supplies.

3. Post classroom rules, three or four, perhaps letting the students help craft them. Remind the students of them at the beginning of each class for the first few weeks, and as needed during the lesson.

4. Know your church's policies for handling discipline problems. When should the director or parents be engaged and how? What physical contact is allowed?

5. Team up with a partner. Many congregations have learned the advantages of staffing two deep, placing at least two adults in each classroom. The benefits are obvious, and it is not as difficult as you might believe. It is easier to enlist both volunteers, since they know they will have support in the room.

God bless your good start 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!

Quality versus Cost

It is unanimous! Everyone would like our Sunday School material to be less costly. That includes us here at the publishing house.

I work for a nonprofit organization. We don't pay dividends to shareholders or big bonuses to upper management. For nearly all our products, we charge a price that returns to the publishing house only enough to sustain our ministry at a level that fulfills our vision: to be the "publisher and provider of choice for products and services that are faithful to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions." We want to be good enough so that you, and others, come to us first.

So what does it mean when a congregation says, "We can no longer afford to purchase your Sunday School material?" Our prices have not skyrocketed. The economy is relatively stable. But, I'm sure that many congregations, probably all congregations, struggle to allocate limited financial resources to a limitless number of ministry possibilities.

How then do congregations respond to tight finances? Probably the same way a family does.

• They buy the best quality (in personnel, equipment, and materials) that they can afford, but they don't overspend.
• They prioritize to get those things that they value most and do not purchase those things they don't really want or need.

So, I find myself wondering: what if our Sunday School material were of lower quality and cost?

• Is there a lower quality, lower price, at which more congregations would buy our material?
• Or would even fewer congregations buy our material if it were cheaper, lower in price and quality?

God bless you as you wrestle with cost and quality as you teach God's children His Word!

Looking Ahead to the Fall Quarter of Sunday School

The lessons in the coming quarter of Concordia's Sunday School materials take us back to the very beginning of the Old Testament—the creation of the world, the fall into sin, the formation of a nation through whom God planned to send a Savior.

Of the 150 Bible accounts we study every three years or so, more than 50 are from the Old Testament. Why? Because it’s there where we find explanations of how we came to be, why we need to hear the Law, why we need also the sweet words of the Gospel. Whether taking us through the narrative history of God’s plan for salvation or giving us pictures (theologians call them types) that foreshadow the coming Savior, each Sunday School lesson we study in the Old Testament points us toward the sacrifice of Christ for our sins.

There are many good reasons to use Concordia Publishing House materials. Whether you use Growing in Christ or Cross Explorations, you’re getting lessons that balance Law and Gospel and, most important, focus on Christ as our Savior.

God bless you as you teach God’s children 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!