Blog
The Sunday School Experiment
Author: Penny A
Date: 05.03.2010
Category: Children & Youth
Translations
Evangelism And An Entrepreneur.
When setting out, in the mid-1990s, to investigate the significant decline of children’s attendances at Sunday Schools during the post-WWII period in Australia, it became necessary to also confront the profound cultural shifts which had taken place in society during that time. George Miller, filmmaker and producer of the children’s movie Babe captured some of this in his assertion that “cinema is now [1995] the most powerful secular religion, and people gather in cinemas to experience things collectively, the way they once did in church” (source: Janet Hawley in ‘The Hero’s Journey’, Good Weekend, 14 Oct 1995, p.57). Fast forward to 2010 and, for ‘cinema’, also read ‘YouTube’, ‘MySpace’, ‘shopping malls’, ‘computer games’... at least in many urban centres of the world.
There are various strategies that the church has used over time to pass on the Christian faith to children and Sunday School is one of the more enduring models. It was intriguing to revisit the early history of “the Sunday School experiment” and its propagator, Robert Raikes, through the research of Revd Dr Mark Griffiths in his book One Generation from Extinction: How the church connects with the unchurched child (Monarch Books, Oxford 2009). Griffiths’ comparative study of early 21st century child evangelism in the UK and Raikes’ initial Sunday School model is well worth a read, not least to be reminded that when Raikes started his first Sunday School in 1780, the idea grew rapidly to reach 300,000 unchurched children within five years!
Raikes was an entrepreneur and social reformer, using his own newspaper, The Gloucester Journal, to propagate the concept of the Sunday School and to publish teaching materials for it. This, in an era of modernity when, as Griffiths suggests, it is possible that ‘the written words of the newspaper were beginning to carry more weight than the preached words of the pulpit’ (One Generation, p.29). With regards to the methods used in Raikes’ early Sunday School, these were heavily influenced by his own philanthropic work in the prisons and his perception about the role which could be played by both literacy and education in “preventing vice” in the lives of children. He understood that education was a ‘currency’ of the times. In addition, Raikes encouraged children to influence other children around them and adopted a personal practise of visiting the homes of the children as he interacted with the wider community.
Several questions arise: Do our 21st century Sunday Schools retain the focus on evangelism, outreach and social reform that gave rise to their creation historically? Are the entrepreneurs, experimenters and businesspeople within our 21st century churches engaged in the process of evangelism to children? How can we encourage this kind of vision? How are we, in our evangelism to children, seeking to understand and engage with their whole context, families and culture? If literacy and education were cultural ‘currencies’ for 18th century children, what are the ‘currencies’ for children in our context today? How can we incorporate these effectively into our models of evangelism, discipleship and care for children?
Keywords: children, Australia, Sunday school, social reform, literacy, education, context
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United States
Very intriguing questions, paricularly, "what are the currencies of youth today?" I do not think anyone has ever asked that question in that framework. Currency relates to things of value often money. When we think about what today’s youth values we have to ask through whose eyes are we assessing the value. If I look only through my eyes without asking the youth that I deal with, then my perspective of what they value would not equate to what they may truly value. From my personal perspective, I think youth today value their friends, cell phones, music, and dancing. The value of relationship with God has little significance because we have not found the currency that youth can relate. I think that we have to ask they youth that we encounter what is important to them and how do we reach them in a language that they understand.
19.06.2011
United States
With this discussion I think it is important to think about the concept of Wednesday Night church for children and youth. Many churches use this format now. For me, our wednesday night program has a van ministry so we use that night for our evangelism movement for kids. During the Sunday School time, we consider that more discipleship, and the messages tend to be deeper.
22.10.2010
United Kingdom
I have also been reflecting on the role of parents in the faith development of children. How can the church support parents in this. Should supporting parents be the main focus of our work with ’churched’ families so that more energy can be focussed on developing work with ’unchurched’ children?
06.10.2010
United Kingdom
I attended a presentation by Mark Griffiths about his research and found it very inspirationa. I was particularly interested in the idea of rescuing the next generation by bringing children coming to faith who grow up to marry and form families of their own in which they nuture faith. The ’Sunday School’ has a key role to play in reaching children and the key features of Raikes’ Sunday Schools may well teach us something about what our Sunday Schools/Children’s groups should look like.
A few years ago, our church changed the format of our Sunday group for primary school children based on the work of Bill Wilson and Metro Ministries in New York. The intention being to reach out to children and families from our immediate community. For a number of reasons this hasn’t happened in the way we had intended, but I’d be interested to hear of how other churches are doing ’Sunday School’ to evanglise to children.
06.10.2010
Togo
Certains indices particulièrement visibles dans le contexte africain semblent montrer que le ministère avec les enfants n’est, en général, pas pris au sérieux par l’Eglise et les Missions. Citons par exemple la proportion de personnes formées pour exercer un Ministère spécifique avec les enfants ou les jeunes.
L’église semble bien comprendre sa responsabilité à former des leaders, des cadres mais elle ne semble pas comprendre le besoin stratégique d’investir dans le Ministère des enfants et des jeunes.
Or pour atteindre les 2 milliard d’enfants dans le monde et les aider à devenir tout ce que Dieu veut qu’ils soient, il est impératif que l’église s’investisse mieux dans la prise en charge des enfants en formant des leaders pour des ministères d’enfants et de jeunes et en initiant des programmes dans lesquels les enfants sont formés comme disciples de Christ. Le choix de faire des enfants des disciples n’est pas précoce comme certains pourraient le penser. Il est stratégique et bibliquement fondé (Prov. 22 : 6).
Notre souhait est que Cap 2010 ait dans son programme des discussions sur la formation des leaders capables d’atteindre le cœur des enfants et les conduire à Christ.
16.07.2010
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