The Sunday School in America was once the backbone of a neighborhood’s church and social life. It was not unusual for people to “belong” and enroll in Sunday School and not bother joining the congregation. At one time they had their own set of officers and controlled their own offerings and budgets.

Sunday Schools had class structures that were graded for the children and often segmented in some manner for adults as well — grouped by decades or marriage status. They adopted names like The Loyal Mizpah or The Busy Bees and met socially at least once a month with the entire Sunday School coming together for a pot luck or picnic less frequently.

On Sunday mornings, classes met in their small groups and then joined together for a closing with a mini-worship service. That’s why so many churches have open stage areas with classrooms lining the perimeter. The form of “beehive” architecture met the function of the day. The structure was introducing and practicing the concepts of worship.

Those days are over. Sunday School’s are failing. Their budgets and governance were turned over to the church governing board. When they exist at all today, they are provided for the benefit of the very young.

Eventually, the church’s failure to educate will affect the entire life of the church.

“Eventually” may be now.

The attention and availability of children are torn by the structure of today’s society. They drift between the homes of Mom and Dad. Some have as many as eight grandparents to please, if you count the active “step” relationships. In addition, society no longer protects Sundays. Stores are open and young parents and teens are staffing them. Schools schedule events on weekends with no consideration for the increasingly diverse faith demands of their constituency. As one public school basketball coach told one of his students who protested a Sunday morning practice, “Prayer isn’t going to improve your jump shot, son.”

So what’s the Church to do. Let’s start by recognizing it’s our responsibility. We have to start teaching and the only way to begin may be during the church service.

That will require the Church Service to open the dialog a bit. Some pastors have begun to pose questions during their sermons and sit back to allow discussion. We experienced this in one of our Ambassador visits. An older woman sitting near us turned to explain, “He thinks we are discussing his sermon. We’re not!” Another added in an apologetic whisper, “He’s been here only a year. We don’t have him trained yet.”

Teaching during the service may require some retraining on many levels. A good place to start is within the framework of a children’s message. Congregations are more likely to accept some experimentation within this context.

Our Ambassadors have witnessed several approaches to a children’s message.

• The fallback children’s sermon platform is the object lesson. An object is presented and the pastor ties it metaphorically to the message of the day. The younger the child, the less likely object lessons have much meaning. Children think more concretely.
• Some pastors simply strip down the message they are about to give to the adults. These are often awkward and easily dominated by the enthusiasm of the children who are happy for the attention and a chance to participate, but haven’t a clue what the pastor is talking about.
• Another approach is highly scripted and usually involves the use of puppets. The puppet sermons we have witnessed have been very well crafted and performed with a solid message, but they tend to lack any interaction with the children or congregation at all.
• Sometimes a lay person presents the children’s message. It may be a parent or a school teacher accustomed to talking to children.
• The children’s sermon is often no more than a short talk. Sometimes the gathered subgroup joins in prayer.
• In about 80% of our visits, the children were dismissed from the rest of the service.

These tend to be the most common structures of a children’s message delivered within the structure of a church service. In our next few posts we will explore ideas for maximizing the teaching value of a children’s sermon and how to begin involving (and teaching) the adults.