4. Sunday school is the caring arm of the church.
Finally, Sunday school is the avenue for providing spiritual care to all church members, including upper elementary students. One objective of every Sunday school is to spiritually care for people so they will “carefully observe all the words of this law.” Some people call this nurturing; others call it maturing.
What is the purpose of Sunday school?
Sunday school is the reaching, teaching, winning and caring arms of the church. However, this definition becomes a mosaic when applied to individual churches. Just as we need all the tile pieces to make up a mosaic, so we need all four aspects of the definition for Sunday school.
If we focus on only one section of the mosaic, we can destroy its beauty and lose the whole picture. This happens when a church demonstrates a strong emphasis on only one aspect. For example, we may gain an abundance of visitors by emphasizing a bus-outreach ministry. The focus on outreach causes a church to lose the perspective of teaching, winning and caring.
Some churches have strong teaching Sunday schools with a deep commitment to Bible mastery but no outreach. Others emphasize soul-winning. They measure their success by how many people they bring to Christ or prepare for church membership. But they lack a passion to oversee students to help them grow in faith. Finally, some Sunday schools do a great job of caring for students but ignore the other three objectives.
Each function is crucial, so don’t forget to build a balanced Sunday school. What is the purpose of Sunday school? The healthy Sunday school performs all four ministry basics equally: reaching, teaching, winning and spiritually caring.
