Reform Sunday School as an Education Service to Your Community It may be strange to see Sunday school on this list of things we must change for our churches, but we should carefully reexamine it. Do you know the original mission of this Sunday program? It was to teach poor children how to read. And […]
Life Groups versus Sunday School Early this morning we make our annual switch to Daylight Saving Time, a transition full of folly and one I wish we’d skip. I wake up tired. I don’t want to roll out of bed and so want to skip church, but I know Candy won’t stand for it. “What […]
Locked Out We head for a church that meets in an office complex, using space provided by an adoption agency. A former coworker of Candy’s is the teaching elder there. Another of her friends recently started attending this nonconventional church. The thought of knowing someone at church is a powerful pull. Lacking a website, they […]
We walk inside to an empty lobby and head toward an amplified sound. We slink into a back row. Sunday school must be running late, but we find out that they cancelled church. Consider these four discussion questions about Church #36: 1. The speaker acknowledges the presence of visitors. He apologizes that there will be […]
Discussing Church 30 When Candy asked about the service time, the pastor confirmed what their website said: 10 a.m. When we arrive, they tell us to sit anywhere. After fifty agonizing minutes, they say, “Thanks for coming. The service will start in about ten minutes.” They used the old bait and switch tactic on us. […]
The Bible Should Inform Our Actions, Not Justify Our Habits Christianity has its traditions and religious practices. We often persist in them with unexamined acceptance. And if we do question our behaviors, we can often find a verse in the Bible to justify them. But that doesn’t make them right. The Lens of Scripture We […]
Re-examine Our Church Practices from a Biblical Viewpoint Over the past few months, I published a series of posts about assumptions we should change about church. Here is a list of all nine: What perspectives should you change about your view of church? Pick the assumption that most convicts you and work to reform it, […]
Designed to Teach Illiterate Kids to Read, Sunday School Needs to Reclaim its Vision of Community Service Quick, what is the purpose of Sunday School? Your answer is likely that Sunday School is intended to teach children about God. Yet, that is not why Sunday School was first started. Sunday School was launched as a […]
What was the original purpose of Sunday school? Religious instruction, right? No, not at all. The initial goal of Sunday school was to provide basic academic instruction to poor children. Sunday school started as a philanthropic effort, not as religious instruction. Teaching underprivileged kids to read was a key means to empower them so they […]