We have three specific weekly "programs", Sunday School, D-Group, and Youth Group. For each of these three things, there is a specific purpose and intent. They are also very different because they must be, we have different kids attend each of these things, and each of them cannot do the same thing. There are time constraints (SS is only an hour versus 1.5 or 2 hours for youth group), transportation concerns, a whole host of things. By that rationale, if your students "only" attends 1 of our 3 programming pieces, understand that they might be missing something. This post begins a several-part series that will give you some insight into what we do in our Eastview Christian Church Student Ministry "department" and, why we do it. At the end of this series (by the end of next week), I will post an action plan detailing each of these programming events so you can look at them, and determine how you might, or might not, encourage your kids to attend.
Today's post deals with that old standby, Sunday School.
As an institution, Sunday School dates way back in church history to about 1751. Yep, it's only about 260 years old.
At Eastview, the Sunday School hour is from 8:45-9:45am, each Sunday (duh). Because many of the students that attend Sunday School come with their parents, our goal is to give them a "more than basic" understanding of the Bible. In our Sunday School hour, we spend our time reading the Bible and discussing the Bible. That's it. Not food beforehand, no games, no small groups, just conversation and discussion about the Bible, what it says, how we might interpret it, and what it means. Currently, we are talking about how we got "here" (today) from "there" (when the events of the Bible took place). We want our students to see how God's Word was written with the intent of intentionality and purpose, and most importantly, how it coheres (relates) to itself. When we are done with that, we will talk about early Church history, how the Bible was put together, the Protestant Reformation...all sort of fun things. We began this back in March, and will probably take a few years to get through. Our Sunday School class is "open", this means that parents and other adults are welcome to join us and participate. We'd love to have you join us!
There it is...an overview of Sunday School; when you think Sunday School, think Bible. It's not that we don't use the Bible in D-group or Youth Group...we do. But Sunday School is intentionally designed to talk specifically about the Bible. If your student only attends Youth Group, they will likely NOT have the depth of Bible understanding (unless they are taught at home or elsewhere) that a student who attends Sunday School would.
And that is why we'd love for your student to come to Sunday School with us.
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