I have fond memories of Sunday school from when I was little. I think I especially liked the teachers up through sixth grade. After that, I really started loosing interest in Sunday school. Occasionally, a good teacher came along, and I perked up a bit. Of course, they usually just substituted for a short period and then we were stuck with our regular teacher. I think the reason I liked Sunday school was primarily that it was one of the few things I was involved with as a child because I was home schooled. And I guess I did learn some from the earlier Sunday school classes. Not too long ago, however, I realized that I’ve come to absolutely hate Sunday school. I think there are many reasons for this. Mostly, I've grown up and can see exactly what's going on. I’m able to better analyze why Sunday school at my church doesn't seem to be effective. Firstly, I think Sunday school teachers need to make sure kids stay interested. I got bored and stopped paying attention. Thus, even if they did say something useful or new, it wouldn’t have mattered because I wasn’t paying attention. Good teachers don't bore their students. I hate the prosaic presentations that have become the norm.
If you can get past how boring Sunday school is, you might discover that kids tend to not apply the things they're taught to their lives. Isn’t that the whole point of Sunday school? To teach people how to live their lives? At my church, it seems like the real goal is to raise Christian snobs rather than mature Christians. They fixate so much on teaching and less on practical applications, one of which, I think, should be outreach. I think Sunday school, especially the High school class, should actually start doing things to help people who are truly in need, not just people from the church. I know there’s youth group for that, but, at my church, not everyone is allowed or able to be in the youth group for various reasons, and I don’t see the youth group doing that much anyway. What I’m saying is that whoever is in charge of the Sunday school classes needs to integrate a practical application unit of how to live like a Christian to Sunday school classes. By doing this, they would capture a greater number of kids to do something truly meaningful. And, of course, the recipients of this practical application would be happy too. If true religion in the sight of God is comforting orphans and widows in their distress and keeping oneself unstained by the world, then I think church at all levels should devote itself more to that and less to academic teaching. Which brings me to my next point: teachers have been intimidated in the past by the amount of Biblical knowledge that my church’s High school kids have. That should never be the case. If it is, then the most obvious solution is trying to help them apply all that knowledge. At one point, I think we had a teacher who really tried to help kids apply that knowledge. So much went wrong in that situation, though. It was obvious from the many stories he shared that he lived a Christian life. But when it came to the finer points of Theology, he was torn apart by the snobs in that class. I haven’t confirmed this, but I think that’s the primary reason he stopped teaching Sunday school. His experience with teaching made him feel inadequate, and I guess he was probably ashamed that kids knew so much more than him about the Bible. The truly disgusting part is that these snobs had fun tearing apart his presentations. I can’t say whether they knew what they were doing, but it was definitely wrong.
The irony is that these kids are supposed to be experts on the Bible, so they should know that attacking and humiliating their elders isn’t acceptable. With this knowledge, they should realize that they are hypocrites for treating their elder so poorly. An environment that is supposed to teach kids how to live like Christians has ended up fostering hypocrites, reversing the desired effect of Sunday school.
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