Guest Post: Going Back to School part 2

Posted on Feb 11, 2012 | 3 comments

guest posts Guest Post: Going Back to School part 2

 

(This post is part of a series: Going Back to School)

Sunday school is becoming a major component in my student ministry; however, if you read my last post, you would know I placed it on the backburner when it came to other ministries. After coming to terms with accepting Sunday school as a full fledge small group, and learning its purpose was for evangelism, I had to take a step back and figure out how it would work in my ministry. And of course, whenever we re-evaluate our ministries, it never fails that self-evaluation soon follows. I finally came to the conclusion; Sunday school was never the problem, the real problem, was my own personal views I had against it. So here are three myths I had to work through, which I believe, cloud our judgment when it comes to Sunday school.

1. Sunday school is outdated. I will admit the only outdated thing about Sunday school is its name. However, everything else pertaining to it is relevant and can change people’s lives. If you don’t like the name, change it, but don’t buy into the myth your ministry is a relic of the past because it has Sunday school.

2. Church isn’t safe. I can acknowledge there have been plenty of churches over the years that have done some terrible things to encourage this stigma; however, have you ever noticed it’s always a select group of people who do this? I finally decided I wasn’t going to let this small group define church for me anymore, and buy into the myth kids won’t come because it isn’t safe. LET ME MAKE THIS LOUD AND CLEAR: CHURCH IS AS SAFE AS YOU MAKE IT! All my Sunday school teachers know one of our main goals is to provide a safe environment for students to feel accepted and loved. When students know Sunday school is safe, they know church is safe. So my question to you is: what are you doing to change the stigma, and make church safe for your students?

3. Students will only learn the bare minimum on Sunday mornings. I don’t know how this myth got started (actually I do have a sneaky suspicion on how it did, but now’s not the time to dive into that), but it never fails, every time I go to a youth ministry seminary, I always hear some guy mention this myth, and every person in the room agrees with him. Have you ever thought about who you’re discrediting when you believe this myth? Let’s make a list: our pastors, who I’m sure don’t believe all their sermon preparation only leads to shallow teaching, the people who write the curriculum we use, our teachers, and worst of all, the Holy Spirit. The truth is, we’ll know what has been taught, but we’ll never know what our students took from the lesson. We need to be better at trusting God, and believe He knows how much truth his children need for the day.

Finally, there was one more issue I had to work through: my pride. Let’s be honest, many of us don’t have any major responsibilities on Sunday mornings. Our time to “shine” is when we get to teach our youth either on Sunday or Wednesday nights. This can be a major issue because we can unintentionally push our time, over time with the body of believers our youth so desperately need. I finally came to the conclusion, if I believe connecting my youth to Sunday mornings with the body of believers is the goal, then every aspect of my ministry needs to reflect that, and I need to be ok with more students coming to Sunday school and morning worship, than my teaching time. We need to realize, we can’t expect our students to come to Sunday school, if every aspect of our ministry doesn’t reflect its importance.

 

(This post is part of a series: Going Back to School)

Guest Post: Going Back to School part 2

Written by: Joshua Fuentes

Joshua Fuentes is the Student Minister at Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, TX, and works with both youth and college students. Josh has been working in student ministry for five years, and has experience as an intern, bi-vocational, and full-time student minister. He has been married for four years and has a beautiful three year old daughter. Currently, Josh is attending seminary at the South Texas School of Christian Studies and writes on his blog at millennialchristianity.com

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  • http://twitter.com/mijah mijah

    Josh, I appreciate your words here. I’m curious what your thoughts are regarding why we don’t think that students learn very much in Sunday School. In my experience, the students seem tired and more checked out compared to our evening meetings. I’ve attributed that to the time of day. But you comments have made me think that maybe it’s more to do with what we do, than how we do it.

    What do you do during Sunday School (teaching, small groups, hang out)? How does it serve your overall goals for the ministry?

    Thanks again.

  • http://youthmin.org/ Ben Read

    Im with Mijah, whenever I feel like students aren’t getting anything out of our version of Sunday School, it mainly has to do with their tiredness. What are your other thoughts on it?

  • http://www.facebook.com/joshua.fuentes Joshua Fuentes

    I have four reasons for what I believe contribute to the myth. First, is the idea of an “entry point” into our ministries. If you have ever read “Purpose Driven Youth Ministry” or “Simple Student Ministry,” both express this idea of a time where people, who don’t know Christ, or new believers, can hear basic concepts of salvation. Well, Sunday mornings are viewed as the “entry point” (at least at my church), which gives the perception only basic learning happens. Second, since we only have limited time on Sunday mornings, it makes people think they don’t have enough time to dig deep into their lessons, which means less learning. Third, sometimes we only get students who only show up on Sunday mornings, which makes us believe they are only learning the bear minimum. So we save all the “deep” stuff for other meeting times. Fourth, we aren’t giving Sunday school the credit it deserves, so we blow it off, which makes students not learn anything. All of these contribute in their own way, and I think they’re all lame excuses to believe students can’t get anything out of what happens on Sunday mornings.

    And Mijah, I’ll answer your second question with my last post in this series! Keep an eye out for it!

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