Part 1: How NOT To Teach Sunday School

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

Don't Rock The Boat

You may have heard the expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". But when it comes to Christian education, the church doesn't seem to know "broke" when they see it. After all, people are being saved, and it's the results that matter most-- isn't it?

First of all, beware of arguments that amount to "the end justifies the means". If it is true that people are being saved by the traditional paradigm, can we therefore justify any and every method used to that end? I've heard people say that they use marijuana as an evangelistic tool because it brings them in contact with people who otherwise wouldn't darken the door of a church or even listen to a simple gospel presentation. While it's true that possession of marijuana is a crime in this country, we can justify it by it's results, according to the standard argument in favor of traditional church structure.

Second, exactly where do you draw the line? How far can we go in justifying a given approach to evangelism, as long as at least one person gets saved as a result? Do we break the law? Do we use the deceptive practice of luring people to church by saying, "Hey, a group of us are going to a place that's offering free pizza, wanna come?", not telling them until they're there that oh, by the way, you have to listen to a sermon first? Is that what the first believers did? No, they went to where the lost were already congregating and brought the gospel to them.

Third, God has a way of making things "work together for good" in spite of our best efforts to thwart Him. So if a few people get saved through traditional church efforts, how do we know whether many more could have been saved had we done things the way God told us in the Bible? On an individual level we do this all the time, trading God's way for our own, only realizing in hindsight that we could have had much more if we'd only have listened.

But most important of all, how many of these allegedly saved people are truly saved? Instead of clear gospel presentations, we continually hear appeals to emotion, or guilt, or fear, or we lure them with promises of riches or healing. And increasingly, we never ever dare to tell the lost that they are-- um-- well-- lost, that they are bound for hell if they do not have Jesus. After all, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, right? But what kind of "salvation" is this? You must be confronted with your hopeless situation before you can see the need for a Savior.

Not only do we fail to clearly show the lost their eternal fate and how to avoid it, we don't seem to know what to do with them if they do get saved. We may get them in the door, but then what? Is Sunday School a proper vehicle for discipleship, turning babes in Christ into spiritually mature leaders of tomorrow? We have classes, we have teachers, we have books and projectors and doughnuts, but do we have a multitude of spiritual warriors graduating from our ranks? You do realize these are all rhetorical questions don't you?