Part 1: How NOT To Teach Sunday School

Why we need not a revival or reformation, but a revolution

Peace at Any Price

The only thing we fear more than change is confrontation. We like Sunday School the way it is because we know our beliefs will never be challenged. We can rest safely in the assurance that no one will ask us to "give an answer to anyone who asks about the hope you possess" (1 Peter 3:15). We cloister ourselves in classes where we know nothing will be required of us but to attend faithfully each week. And if, heaven forbid, we get cornered out in the world by someone who asks us what or why we believe, we mumble something about "I just feel it's the truth" and try to get away.

Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture? What do we condition people to do when we have safe, non-confrontational classes where no opinions differing from the church's or the pastor's are uttered? We are completely unprepared to "contend earnestly for the faith" (Jude 1:3) because we don't train for it in Sunday School. Instead, we just keep covering the same familiar ground, scratching the same surface, and getting the same fearful and unprepared Christians.

The Bible tells us we are in a spiritual battle, but we send our soldiers out without armor or weapons, then whine when they get hurt! We talk about "putting on the whole armor of God" (Eph. 6:10-17) but we don't have any idea how that's actually done. We have a weapon, "the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God", but we have no clue how to use it effectively, preferring instead to keep it shiny and clean in its sheath. If the world's armies trained the way Christians do, maybe we'd finally have a way to prevent war!

Seriously though, we aren't training soldiers for battle, and that's why we get beat up in the world. It may come as a shock to some, but our very unwillingness to take a firm stand for our beliefs has probably turned a great many people away from the gospel. Other religions put us to shame in this regard. The world admires them for their firm convictions, something the churches have shied away from for a very long time.

And it comes from Sunday School. We have no plan in place to toughen students for battle. We are so lulled to sleep by our familiar traditions that we have not even begun to consider how we might train tomorrow's "Christian Soldiers". It's much easier to sing about them than make them, and we rarely even do that much. Songs about war and battle have been all but forgotten.