There is a growing “back to the basics” movement among churches saying, “It’s time to pull out the Sunday School curriculum and sword drills and teach children what they need to know. Does anyone know where we stored the flannel graph?”
The challenge with this approach is that it never worked well in the past, and it won’t work well in the future. We memorized the books of the Bible and the sanitized Bible stories, but we hated church. Most of my peers from Sunday School days are no longer in church, and they won’t be back soon.
I think there’s a better way to achieve the goals of Sunday School without resurrecting the beast. The reality is, we are losing generations of children; we can’t afford to mess this up again.
Let me offer several steps to building an effective next-generation strategy to teach children without driving them away.
1. Make Deuteronomy 6 the template.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (NIV) These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
While the law is full directions for temple worship, Moses clearly instructs parents to be the source of biblical knowledge and spiritual heritage for their kids. The church cannot supplant parents in that role. Sunday School tried to take something that didn’t belong to the church.
We have to figure how to give this fundamental responsibility back to parents.
2. Make the senior pastor the children’s ministry champion.
If the vast majority of people become Christ followers before they reach high school, what could be more important than children’s ministry in the church? If Jesus said we must become as little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, what could be more important than children’s ministry in the church?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. Is there anything more important in the life of a church than equipping parents to lead their children to Christ? If it’s that important, then the senior pastor should champion the cause on a regular, public basis. Not begging for volunteers, but casting vision and waving the flag for ministry to kids.
3. Make parents and children’s small group leaders the heroes.
Who does your church honor as heroes? Who gets the applause? Whose story is told from the platform. As pastors, we are often guilty of devaluing the role of parents or children’s ministry volunteers when they are on the front lines of leading people to Christ.
How can we depict parenting little Christ followers as a heroic endeavor? How can we make a children’s small group leader the most desired position in the church?
