Sunday School, revisited

I seem to have confused several people with my previous post on this topic, and on re-reading it, I can see why! What can I say: I wrote it late at night!

To set the record straight, I think children's programming in churches is valuable.  Kids are not mini adults; they are more active, more impulsive, concrete thinkers, and hands-on learners.  So if kids are going to get much out of a religious experience, whether it's designed just for children or for all ages, it needs to be designed to take advantage of the characteristics they have.  My grandma also made an excellent point that children whose families don't go to church are more likely to come to (and benefit from) a Sunday School or a children's church rather than an adult-oriented service.

What I intended to object to were the following:

1.  Children and youth being completely segregated from adults, so that they never see people of other ages, developmental stages and lengths of spiritual experience interacting with God.  I cannot tell you how much I've learned about God and faith through interacting with others who were at different stages than I was.  This was true of me as a child and teen watching adults, but it's still true of me as an adult being with children and young people.  We of different ages need each other to be the whole body of Christ.

2.  Sunday School curricula that focus on information but neglect engagement.  It's great for kids to know what's inside the Bible, but knowledge alone doesn't lead to transformation.  (This is an issue for adults, too!) In addition to learning the stories, we need to learn how to wrestle with and listen to the God who stars in the stories, and we need to learn how to let the stories shed light on our daily lives.  A good teacher will make space for this regardless of how the curriculum is written, but it would be better to have curriculum written in such a way that the target outcome is not to have kids able to tell you facts about what they learned today (as if it were a math or spelling lesson) but to have them come out having engaged with God in some way, and able to continue to engage during the rest of the week.  (I am not saying Sunday schools should trade Bible stories for something else--that would be a terrible loss!--but that children should be led to interact with stories in such a way that they don't just learn the information contained in them, but develop a way of relating to the Bible, and to God, that will follow them into adulthood.)

The church we visited on Sunday was opposite in many ways from the previous week--large, lots of children and children's programming completely separate from "big church" (although I was pleased to see that children seemed to be welcome in the service if their parents chose to bring them in), good expository sermon which made a rather difficult passage in Romans clearer to me than it has been in the past, and a keen awareness of God's work in the rest of the world.  I liked it, but I don't know that we're going to settle there.  However, I'm thinking about putting Esther in their AWANA program (Bible memorization program for little ones) for this semester.  I think she would love it, and it will give her some continuity in the people she sees each week until we find a church home.