First Article Christians

A fellow editor at CPH, responding by e-mail to a customer, gave me a handle on the big short-coming of so many Sunday School curricula on the market these days, including some that are very popular even in LCMS churches.

These Sunday School materials dwell almost exclusively on "first article" theme: "God is good." "God cares for you." "God loves you."

Don't get me wrong! I confess the First Article of the Apostles' Creed just as loudly as I do the second and third. But as my colleague pointed out, the truths of the First Article are essentially natural knowledge about God, things we can know without having to even read the Scriptures, teachings that can be affirmed even by many non-Christians. Sunday School material that dwells exclusively on the First Article will miss entirely the saving nature of Christ and the blessings of life nurtured by Word and Sacraments.

I'm proud to be part of a team that publishes a Sunday School curriculum, Growing in Christ, and teaches the truths of the Second and Third Articles as well as the First, one where Christ is the center of each lesson, even those in the Old Testament, and where Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar are not avoided.

How was Jesus taught in your Sunday School classroom this past week?

Thanks for all you do to teach God's children His Word.

Callahan's Second Key

I started last week running through Kennon Callahan's Twelve Keys to an Effective Church and will continue the list this week. (But I can't promise to do them order; who knows what other topics may intrude.)

Callahan's second key is Pastor and Lay Visitation. He includes here visits to the unchurched, newcomers, constituents, and members and proposes they be done weekly.

If we tranlate this key to the Sunday School level, we need to consider a few issues.

Is visitation a "lost art"? That's how Callahan describes it in his book (which, you will remember, was published in 1983). And what constitutes a "visit"? To be sure, there is a very different dynamic in a phone call or e-mail contact than a face-to-face contact, and I would suggest that face to face is always better, if it is possible. Yes, it requires time and effort, but when teachers and Sunday School leaders take time to connect with those who attend, or who could attend or used to attend, Sunday School, they can expect fruit. Every ounce of effort expended by your church will be noticed, and almost certainly appreciated, that the people you visit.

You're not ready yet to commit to personal visits. Then commit to phone calls, or personal e-mails (not group posts, please), and strive to make the consistently under some or all of the following circumstances:

• first-time visitors and attenders (those who have attended your Sunday School for the first time, whether they are visitors from the community or families who are considering church membership.


• new enrollees (those who have expressed a commitment to your Sunday School, filled out the registration form, signed on the dotted line, should be welcomed and a concerted effort made to get to know them better, figure out who they might be hooked up with for support, and determine what other resource they might benefit from in the congregation)


• absentees (Set a bench-mark here: absent one week, absent two weeks in a row, absent three weeks. Don't be shy! Say "We noticed you [your child] have [has] not been in Sunday School and wanted to see if there was anything amiss, anything we could do to get you back." You may get an excuse; you may get an earful; you may be able to provide significant support and assistance; you may just prod the lazy sinful nature to come again to God's house to hear about His grace and love.

These visits, whether in person or on the phone, can make a huge difference. They should be made by someone with a natural interest; the teacher is a logical candidate.

Commit to it. See if it makes a difference in your ability to teach God's children His Word.

Keys to an Effective Sunday School

More than twenty-five years ago Kennon Callahan authored a wonderful book that shaped much of my thinking about how a congregation works. It is titled Twelve Keys to an Effective Church and it is still available in limited quantities. It is worth reading.

His "twelve keys" are also worth looking at in terms of Sunday School.

The first key in his list of twelve is one of six relational keys "Specific, Concrete Missional Objectives." Simply put, if you don't know where you are going, any road is as good (or bad) as another; you have a great chance of wandering endlessly.

Specific, because until you can state your objective(s) briefly and clearly, you have little hope of meeting them.

Concrete, because if you can't actually envision the end result, describing it in tangible ways, you cannot really plan to go there.

Missional, which I always thought was an odd word, pushes your objectives out of the selfish and maintenance oriented realm into the world of Christian service.


How would you describe the objectives for your Sunday School? Are they written down? Are they specific, concrete, and missional?


I would love to hear about them! As the weeks unfold, I'll strive to unpack the other eleven "keys" as they related to Sunday School.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Active Training

Your teachers are a key link between your curriculum (hopefully a good one) and your students. It will pay to train them as much as they are willing to be trained.

It used to be that weekly (or at least monthly) teachers' meetings were the norm for Sunday Schools, just as weekly rehearsals were normative for choirs. In addition, quarterly training courses and regional workshops, and an annual or triennial national conference, were provided. These days it is rare that I hear of a Sunday School that offers a teachers' meeting once a quarter.

Your staff may be small enough, or so hard to assemble, that regular face-to-face group training seems impossible. What can you do? First browse the collections of ideas I offered in June 2011; you'll find it here.) Then consider what you can do one-on-one.

• Send an article to your teachers and meet briefly to discuss it after Sunday School or in individual phones calls with your staff. You'll find many to choose from at teachersinteraction.cph.org under "Read Some Featured Articles."




• Spend a few minutes before class reviewing the features of the teacher guide and other resources with each teacher, one each week.




• Invite teachers to suggest areas of need, locate and provide resources, and follow up by phone to discuss them.

You get the picture. If you just send or give the resource, it is passive; the teacher may or may not benefit from it. It is the active contact that provides accountability and feedback.

God bless you as you help others teach God's children His Word.

How do you provide training for new or continuing teachers?

What resources have you found most helpful?

When Do You Promote?

I've helped out a lot this summer for my church's Sunday School program. The "School Year" teachers get to take the summer off, and volunteers were scarce.

An issue that cropped up for me is one that you might find familiar. As the kids signed in each week, they were to mark their grade level; we used last year's grade, or as I started calling it later in the summer, "the grade you've graduated from." (That has a nice positive ring to it, don't you think?)

Then in mid-August the kids went back to school, so the DCE (my wife) changed the sign-in sheets to request "the grade you are now attending." That's great!

It strikes me, though, that a case could be made for promoting students at the beginning of the summer, just after they have completed their year of school. If your students meet in standard graded classrooms through the summer, they might meet their new teacher and use the next grades material. It might be a bit more work in the spring, but less work to start in the fall. The students might have a slight, positive boost in attitude. And you could still have a Rally Day or Christian Education Festival in the fall even though the students have already been promoted.

What do you think?

When do you promote your Sunday School students to the next grade? Why?

What are the pros and cons of promoting the first week of June? The first week of September?

Thanks for all you do to teach God's children His Word!

Yes, You Can, and Should, Adapt Your Lessons

Last week's post bears a little follow up. I can simply not emphasize it enough: teachers can, should, and will adapt each week's lesson to best teach God's Word to the children He sends them.

You Can
Just in case your were waiting for permission, now you have it. You can change the lesson plan printed in your teacher guide to accommodate the resources you have available, the room in which you teach, the abilities of the students you will have in class, and your own teaching preferences.

You Should
Not only can you do this, but it is a good thing. The editor does not you or your situation and cannot accommodate for those things. I offer our customers a great starting place, but I rely on the teacher to make the final adjustments based on local preferences and needs.

You Will
And though I take time to emphasize these things, the reality is that you certainly already adapt your lessons on the fly, probably every week. If time grows short, you cut to the end. If you appear to be finishing early, you extend things a bit. If the language in the guide seems awkward, you reword. If you think an activity is dumb, you skip it. If you could find the object suggested, you wing it. That's what teaching is all about!

Please Don't . . .
So, you can, should, and will adapt your lessons as you prepare and teach them. But, please! Don't revise the theology! One of the strengths of Growing in Christ Sunday School materials, is that they have been carefully written, edited, and reviewed by folks chosen for their ability to teach God's Word in accordance with Lutheran theology, that is to say, what the Bible really teaches. If you believe something has been misstated, your pastor is a ready resource for verifying what is true and should be taught. Though we strive at CPH be be consistently faithful and error-free, our systems occasionally skip a beat. Don't hesitate to let us know, if you think that has happened.


We earnestly desire that God's Word be taught to His children correctly.


What do you find yourself revising most frequently in the lessons you teach?



Which do you think is easier: revising a bogus activity or revising the theological basis for a lesson?

Is This a Good Test of a Sunday School Curriculum?

"The math questions are too hard."

I confess that I don't get it, but that complaint has been registered about our middle grades Growing in Christ materials. It is one of the reasons cited for a possible change of curriculum. Sigh.

I could argue that the math questions cited, used as part of a puzzle that reviewed a key biblical text in the lesson, were not too hard. In checking a number of on-line math practice resources, all the skills involved are taught in most third-grade classes. I would readily admit, however, that skill development in elementary students varies widely and the problems will undoubtedly seem hard for some students. And the use of math problems in a Bible lesson is not my first preference anyway.

I could also argue, though, that mathematical intelligence is one of the many "ways kids are smart" according to the theories of Howard Gardner and, in varying instruction to engage a wide range of learning styles, using math activities with students who are mathematically inclined is not a bad strategy.

But I really don't need to go far with either of those arguments.

My big concern is with using any single activity, or the inclusion of a type of activity on an occasional basis, as rationale for rejecting an entire curriculum.

The essence of any Christian Sunday School curriculum is its ability to share the Gospel. If you can find two or more such curricula (good luck with that), then you can get fussy about other elements. I promise you, that it will be much easier to edit, adapt, and supplement the activities in a curriculum than it will be to correct bad theology and infuse Gospel.

Really! You cannot expect that any curriculum will meet your needs in every respect! You can read more about why I say that in my first post to this blog; you can read it here. But I would always make theology, Jesus Christ as Savior in every lesson, the non-negotiable starting point.

What criteria do you look for in Sunday School curricula?


God's richest blessings as you teach His children His Word.