Part 1: How NOT To Teach Sunday School

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

God will bless the effort

Can God make a dragster out of a toy wagon? Of course He can, but should He have to? Is that His will? God gives us gifts for a reason, and He will enable and empower such gifted people to do what He has planned for them to do. But when we ignore the Holy Spirit's leading and just swallow every claim to inspiration, we start putting round pegs in square holes but then have the gall to wonder why things aren't running smoothly. The Bible likens the church to a body, but what kind of body uses its hands to walk or its elbows to speak? Yet that's what we do when we put ungifted and ill-suited people into teaching positions.

I hope you are beginning to see why the typical Sunday School has become something of a joke. When such teachers are faced with the task of doing something they have no clue how to do, they either slavishly follow the "quarterly" or whip out the "ace of spades": the TV. Show a video and voila! you have an expert teacher in the room. Never mind whether the speaker on the video is either talking over everyone's head (including the teacher's), or whether the content is no deeper than the lesson book. The important thing is to fill the time and keep the hamster wheel spinning.

Look at the Bible's account of the history of the people of Israel. How many times do we see that they forfeited blessings because of rebellion, yet God always worked around them? Surely we should not repeat those mistakes and be content with challenging God to make something good from our disobedience! It's almost arrogant to continually put forth our worst effort as a church and then dare God to bless it. We would never admit to as much in public, but we know deep down inside that our actions are speaking much louder than our words, both to God and to the world.