Christ Is Arisen!

Christians, to the Paschal Victim

Offer your thankful praises!

The Lamb the sheep has ransomed;

Christ, who only is sinless,

Reconciling sinners to the Father.

Death and life have contended

In that combat stupendous;

The Prince of life, who died,

Reigns immortal.

God bless you richly as you teach His children His Easter Word!

Video: What Is Holy Week?

Consider sharing this video with your students (or congregation) this week.

God bless your Holy Week and Easter as you teach His children His Word!

A Lectionary-Based Sunday School?

I'm feeling some heat this week for decisions CPH made over a year ago to remove dates from our Sunday School lessons. This move ended more than thirty years of dated Sunday School lessons from CPH. Some of our customers, looking back, remember our curricula as lining up with the Church's lectionary far more closely than it actually did. But the criticism is deserved to some degree, because a lesson that has been edited so that it can be taught on any Sunday of the year will not resonate well on Easter or Christmas.

Why did we remove the dates? Because basing Sunday School lessons on the lectionary is perhaps the most expensive way to produce such material. Every component of the curriculum has to be carefully edited, re-written, and printed each quarter to match the shifting Church Year calendar. Sunday Schools, and church budgets, are shrinking, and complaints about rising costs of material were increasing.

Enter Church Year Connections!

This book and CD product provides resources that equip the Sunday School Director in openings, or the teacher in his or her classroom, to help students connect each lesson with what is going on in the Church Year. The Bible study for a Sunday in March may be about Jesus being anointed, but the student also learns about the approaching Passion of our Lord through hymns and songs, prayers, object lesson, and teaching points.

For less than 60 cents a week, you can have a lectionary-based Sunday School experience that meshes well with the Growing in Christ or Cross Explorations materials you love.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Teach God's Children His Word

Not values, except as God's Word prompts us in holy living.

Not history, except as God's Word reveals God at work through history to unfold His Story, His work for our salvation.

Not relationships, except as God's Word declares us one with Him through Christ and brothers and sisters in the family of God.

Not what we should do, except as God's Word teaches us who we are through Baptism into Christ and therefore, how we live as His children.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Is Lent Law?

On the face of it, Lent strikes us as Law.

"Unless you repent, you will all . . . perish." (Luke 13:3)

And what does it mean to repent? First, that that we confess our sinfulness. Second, that we believe in the work of Christ to pay for our sins. And third, that we turn from our sin to lead a godly life.

More Law? No. All three parts of repentance (confession, faith, and godly living) are God at work in us by His grace. God works in us the desire to confess, else we would not recognize our sin. God works faith in us through His Word, else we would trust only in ourselves. God works in us to will and to do that which pleases Him.

Lent is a somber season, for it forces us to see clearly that our sinfulness required Jesus' sacrifice. But, Lent is also a vivid revelation of God's love and grace. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)

God bless you as you share His Lenten love with His children through His Word!

Demographics? Or Something Else?

I have heard recently that research shows a direct correspondence between birthrates and Sunday School attendance across the United States, as if to say, "The reason our Sunday School is declining is that our members are having fewer children."

I don't buy it. That sounds to me like an excuse.

Arnold C. Mueller, synod's editor of Sunday School materials from 1933 to 1966, prepared a document titled "The Sunday School Standard" that suggested five characteristics of a strong Sunday School:

1. A sound educational program (classes for all ages, doctrinally sound materials, each teacher receives all desired materials, classes weekly all year round for at least an hour a week)
2. Adequate and trained leadership (teachers are carefully selected, well trained, well prepared, and publicly recognized; teachers meetings are held twice a month; training courses held each year)
3. A planned mission endeavor (mission work is stressed, students and teachers are trained to be personal missionaries, mission offerings are gathered regularly, at least 80% of eligible students are enrolled, all members are contacted annually to enroll, absentees are contacted by phone or visited, plans are made to improve enrollment and attendance each year)
4. Good administration and equipment (Sunday School is administered by a board of the congregation, adequate space and furnishings are provided, sufficient funds to operate the Sunday School are budgeted annually by the congregation)
5. Vital home and church relationships (Sunday School students also attend church with their families, parents are frequently contacted by teachers and administrators, parents are encouraged to discuss lessons at home)

Where the characteristics Rev. Mueller describes are evident in a congregation and its Sunday School, the Sunday School will thrive because God's Word will be shared in and through it. God promises to bless our efforts to spread His Word (Isaiah 55:11).

The truth is that Sunday School is now, and always has been, hard work. Are we truly making an effort?

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Ashes, Dust, and the Gospel

We started Lent Wednesday evening with the Divine Service preceded by imposition of ashes and the solemn reminder, "Remember you are dust and to dust you will return." It is a helpful reminder of our mortality and our sinful nature. It is Law.

The essence of excellent Lutheran education is a right teaching of Law and Gospel. At times, I suspect we may fail to get the right balance (letting the Gospel predominate) or the right order (Law followed always by Gospel). It is a failing from which humorist Garrison Keillor has often drawn his material, such as this verse from his poem Habañera.

Well, if you’re shy and from the Midwest

And grow up Lutheran, it’s always Lent

He wanted music, laughter and music

But guilt was his mother’s favorite instrument

I would desire that we make the Gospel, rather than the Law, our ultimate goal even during Lent. Let each lesson we teach in this solemn season "show us our sin," yes (Law), but also "show us our Savior" (Gospel).

May God bless you this Lent as you teach His children His Word!