My Adventures with God Ch. 20

Sunday School - just not as you know it

We had contact with kids through religious education in the school and our recent holiday program. The next step was Sunday School – but it was not anything resembling the Sunday School model current then or now. We were very, very different!

We were not babysitting kids while their parents went to church – none of their parents did go to church. Two of the kids did have a grandmother who was a church attender. Some had mums who were Sunday School helpers. Mostly the kids had no previous association with the church. They came because they really wanted to be there. They got themselves up on Sunday mornings while their parents were still sleeping in, got themselves ready and set off for Sunday School.

We were not enticing them in with craft activities – we were giving them what they really craved – Jesus and his concern for them reflected in people who had already found his love.

How did we arrive at this model? By asking God what he wanted done! As a group we prayed about having a Sunday School at all, and we prayed about all the details, and we asked God to provide everything we needed. God answered these prayers.

First with key people. My wife Sue led the outfit. Inez, recently re-committed as a Christian, came on board as one of the teachers. She was a person of incredible natural ability and now coupled that with a sincere and deep faith. As the local doctor's wife and because of her community service, she held a high social position and esteem in the community. Inez, Sue and Rosalie headed up the teaching team.

Rosalie, as well as Sunday School was helping me with RE classes in the state schools, and also starting up a pastoral care team. I said earlier how God gave her songs for the kids to sing. These songs were so catchy that they were easy to sing unaccompanied, and expressed the feelings and Christian experience of the local kids so well.

Helen, who had been re-converted during my door-to-door evangelism was a fantastic help. She lived the other side of the village, in what had been social housing. Knowing that kids there wanted to come, she picked them up in her car and drove them to Sunday School, then stayed as a helper.

A number of women who had been converted wanted regular contact but could not go to church. I spoke earlier about “gatekeepers”. There was no way these new converts could get past Jan and her fellow gatekeepers to come to church. They knew just as a fact of country town life that church was not for the likes of them! So we brought them all in as Sunday School helpers. The comradeship of being valued, of being part of the team was important. It was a reflection of the fact that they were important – most of all important to God. Despite how “the church” may have regarded them hey did matter. Being able to listen-in they were learning the basics they needed to know about the new life in Jesus. So Sunday School doubled as “church” for many newly converted women.

Second with teaching. The simile we felt came as a result of our prayers was this: a mother bird feeding her young.

These – kids and helpers – were baby Christians. Eventually they would need to get to know the Bible for themselves (and for the kids I was already giving them a systematic view of it in RE classes) but for the present it needed to be a bit pre-digested. If you have no previous knowledge of the Bible it is heavy going. If life's problems are pressing in on you you need some answers NOW – not after a few years Bible reading!

That situation is just like a baby bird. It needs nourishment now. Early on, the mother chews up the insects, mixes in her own digestive juices and regurgitates it into the baby bird's mouth. So our Sunday School teachers – particularly Inez and Sue who had been raised on the Bible – regurgitated its teaching in simple ways.

It worked like this: during prayers the kids brought up issues. The whole range of things worrying them – from domestic violence and family breakup, through problems at school to the state of the world. The teachers talked through the issues raised explaining Jesus' way of coping or understanding them and the pre-digested Biblical teaching that was helpful to the situation. Then they would pray about the things the kids had raised.

Prayer was next on the list. They prayed together. As I said above, the topics came from the kids' concerns. What the Bible had to say about God's feelings on this sort of problem had been discussed where necessary. Then the leaders prayed. Simple language, and communal rather than private prayer. but otherwise they prayed how they prayed in their own relationship with God. So another thing the kids and helpers were learning was how more mature Christians pray.

PS : A quick note on prayer styles : God understands every language known. (and more!) So we really don't have to pray in a special formal or old fashioned language! Our normal language is quite intelligible to him.

But …. there is a difference between private and public prayer!

In private I can pour out my heart to God. In public I cannot! First there are things I can say between me and God that should not be public knowledge. Second in public, I should be voicing the prayers of the group. I should be praying not just what I think, but what everyone can say “Amen” to. They are different situations.

However, despite the necessary alteration for semi-public prayer, the kids and helpers were learning how to relate to God in prayer. God also both honoured and used this. He gave demonstrable answers to these prayers and so confirmed what was being taught about Jesus.

Singing, as I said was an important part. Unaccompanied – we didn't have any instrumentalist early on, and with Rosalie's songs we didn't need accompaniment. I just flag this for people beginning ministries: Tell God your problem not your imagined solution! My problem had been how to have singing in RE classes. God provided his solution. It was better than anything I could have dreamed up. His solution did not involve finding piano or guitar players. We could easily have fallen into the trap of deciding ourselves that the solution to our problem was just finding say a guitarist – God may have provided one but we would have missed out on a much better solution!

Money. I still have bad memories of Sunday School (Sabbath School in my case) collecting money whist singing “Hear the pennies dropping count them as they fall, every one for Jesus he shall have them all” We didn't do that!

First teachers set the example. Remember Jesus' comment that the poor widow who put a few copper coins in the Temple treasury had given more than all the rich people throwing in bags of gold. Its not the amount its the proportion. So If kids were to give 20 cents out of their pocket money, they needed to see the doctor's wife put in $20 at least!

Second it didn't disappear into church funds. The kids got to decide where the money should go. They had some obvious things they chose – for instance disaster relief following newspaper stories. They had some quirky ones – at one time they sponsored a small animal in the Melbourne zoo. One time they sent money to Great Britain during the Falklands war – and received a letter from Queen's secretary thanking them and saying the money would be used to help wounded soldiers.

How the teachers lived. How they treated the other teachers and helpers and how they treated the kids was also an open book on the new life in Jesus. The importance of demonstrating our own progress the Christian life by example should not be underestimated.

There is much more should be said about this Sunday School because it was one of our big success stories – and I will say some more in later chapters – but as I was busy in church while it was on I can't give much more first hand information – except the obvious effect it had on the kids the helpers and the flow-on effects to their families. 

My Adventures with God: Ch.17

Ch 17: Kids: its really easy

In Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera “the Pirates of Penzance” when Frederic, who was mistakenly apprenticed to a pirate as a boy and now come of age renounces his 'vile profession', an old hand laments: “Besides, we can offer you but little temptation to remain with us. We don't seem to make piracy pay. I'm sure I don't know why, but we don't.”

To which Frederick replies: “Well I do! But alas I may not tell you!”

People in the decades since our time at Lang Lang have often lamented in my hearing: “We just don't know how to get young people to church these days.” It has always reminded me of Frederick, and I have felt like saying; “Well I do! But alas I may not tell you!” Naturally charity and cowardice always won out and I said nothing. But it is such an important point that I will spell it out now.

Reaching young people for Jesus is simple. Hard work, but dead simple.

The reason I may not tell the people who wring their hands and lament that they cannot get young people to church these days is because their motives are wrong! They may fool themselves that they have the right motive but they don't even fool me – what chance that they can fool God!

They do not really want to bring young people to God through Jesus Christ and let them go on together. They actually want to win young people for themselves. They love their denomination or style of church service or congregation. They see its population profile ageing. They see a better future for this thing they love – denomination, congregation or church service – if young people swell the ranks. So they desire to bring young people in ….. but in to a particular human activity as a higher priority that to the one true God!

It's called “Idolatry”. No wonder God does not back up their efforts, and that it also why I would and could not tell them how it can be done!

If you want to reach young people first get your priorities straight!

They belong to Jesus! He loves them. He died for them. He bought their salvation with the price of his own blood! They are infinitely precious. Jesus said “If any one causes one of these little ones to stumble it would be better for them at the Judgement to have a large millstone tied around their necks and be thrown into the sea!”

Smart alpine hikers know the rule: “Don't get between a bear and her cubs”. Church people need to learn: “Don't get between Jesus and his little ones!” There is one and only one permitted reason to reach young people: to bring them into a relationship with Jesus, perhaps under God to help them to grow into the full stature of Christ and then in either case to step back!

If you accept your role as Jesus emissary. If you accept that they belong to Him, not to you or your way of doing church or anything else, then reaching young people is simple.

Here are some of the things we got to do:

School holidays were approaching and we had an idea. I think it was one of those human-but-God-directed ideas. At college most of the students had cut their teeth in evangelism by helping with summer “beach missions”. Officially titled “Children's Special Service Mission” CSSM for short, they were so well staffed with young evangelical men and women who formed attachments to other staffers that they were jokingly re-named: Come Single Soon Married”. However they were very effective in taking the Gospel to children who were normally outside the influence of the church. They operated by offering entertaining activities mixed with low key biblical teaching at popular family beach resorts during the summer holidays.

So we planned to put on something similar during the coming Autumn school break. Lang Lang church had no young people in the church but Koo-wee-rup had a number of young families and a dedicated band of Sunday School teachers. So we did a combined effort with activities at both churches staffed by current church people from Koo-wee-rup and mainly new believers from Lang Lang.

It was amazingly successful. Fun activities in a small country town attract bored kids like flies to a BBQ. RE classes in the schools had paved the way but now God had gone a decisive step further to breaking down the barrier dividing “the Church” from ordinary kids in the town.

We now had an “in” with Lang Lang's kids. The next step was to use it.

We believed that God intended us to use this “in” to start a Sunday School in Lang Lang. We were beginning to realise that the “old” model of Sunday School would not do at all.

Three or four decades earlier churches in general, and Lang Lang was no exception, had large Sunday Schools. Society in general was much more “churched” is was simply more socially acceptable. So parents, even though they did not necessarily attend church themselves, thought Sunday School should be part of their children's education.

By the 1980's there had been a gradual but decisive social change. Church attendances were falling. Congregations were ageing. Sunday Schools were becoming a thing of the past.

It seemed to us that to try to prop up a failing institution was wrong. We had to find a new way. A way that worked now. A way that worked with kids who knew nothing of “church” but were curious about Jesus and his love.

PS: STRATEGY TIP ... We didn't know it, but the way God was directing us, which we thought was something new we were discovering was actually tried and true military strategy! For the benefit of readers I will briefly sketch this strategy. It is called (in Australia at any rate) “Surfaces and Gaps”

What happens when rain falls on parched cracked ground? It runs off the hard baked surfaces but it seeps into the cracks!

The military analogy is this: Where your advance is meeting stiff resistance is the “surface”: where your troops are advancing easily is the crack (or gap). The temptation is to throw more resources at the “surface”. That is a mistake. Sound strategy is to throw your extra resources where you are succeeding.

Church people are continually falling into the temptation of throwing more and more effort into propping up activities and institutions which are failing. Let them go! Put, under God, your effort into what is succeeding, or into something new which will succeed.

So we developed a radically new model for Sunday School. It was exciting. It was different. It succeeded.

Be patient. It will be another two blogs before I get to give you the details!