It is a perspective born of the 1950s and 1960s when Sunday Schools were booming among Lutherans. Even into the 1970s, Sunday School attendance often competed with worship attendance. On my vicarage the Sunday School ran at the same time as the second of three Sunday services, thus providing a convenient way for parents to worship unhindered by fidgeting little ones in another building for Sunday School. Indeed, it was successful -- from a numbers perspective! Some 500+ children gathered in the gym and Sunday School rooms while the worship attendance was about 700. But those were the boom years and things have not been so rosy ever since.
Funny, though, because Sunday School was never quite a good fit for Lutherans. From the Catechism we expressed the desire -- dare I say expectation -- that the religious instruction of the young was the duty and obligation of the parents. In America the Sunday School was not so essential when most of our children went to the Lutheran parochial school of the parish and received their religious instruction there. But we Lutherans have never been one to ignore an idea when it comes to us from others. So we bellied up to the idea and owned it for a time. It became more essential when numbers in the Lutheran school dropped and when we began mission congregations without schools during the great boom years of church planting in the 1950s and 1960s. What else were we to do with kids who were not in a Lutheran school and whose parents had largely abdicated their responsibility as the primary teachers of the faith?
Now we find ourselves in the position of providing nearly all the religious instruction of the young through the congregation -- Sunday School, catechism class, and youth group. Little is expected from the home and many of our parents do very little there to impart the faith -- at least in terms of instruction. The Sunday School became our lifeline... until things changed again.
What changed? Lutheran birth rates dropped. We had less children to educate in the faith. Lutherans divorced. Their children were with the custodial period only every other weekend and often gone during the summer as well. Lutherans took up outreach. The unchurched changed from being lapsed Christians baptized as children and raised in the Sunday School into people without much of any religious background for whom Sunday School was a concept as foreign to them as the creed. They did not immediately warm up to the value of Sunday School instruction for their youth. Lutherans found alternatives to church and Sunday School. They found recreational choices, enrolled their kids in sports programs on weekends and Sunday mornings, and found Sundays a convenient time to sleep late and reduce religious commitments to worship only.
My neighbors, the second largest Baptist church in town, have also struggled. Once their Sunday School attendance was advertized as the most vital statistic of their vitality and growth. They found the same problems Lutherans did and now their folks are not necessarily there every Sunday, for Sunday School and worship, or for the evening services of Sunday and Wednesday nights. Many developed sports ministries of their own in an effort to reclaim youth to the church (and, their parents, of course). But even the mighty Southern Baptists have seen numbers decline.
My own hidden desire would be to ditch Sunday School and go back to the idea of a Lutheran home being the center of instruction in the Scriptures and catechism and where Lutheran kids are educated in Lutheran elementary, middle, and high schools. But that will not happen. So I am stuck with an institution Lutherans did not invent and are not fully comfortable with yet we cannot discard or our youth will not be instructed as they should in the great stories of the Bible and the six chief parts of the Christian faith. I kind of feel like the diabetic who must take the pill or shot to live but wishes every day he did not have to.... I suspect I am not alone in my ambivalence to Sunday School.
7 comments:
What changed? Lutheran birth rates dropped... Lutherans divorced... The unchurched changed from being lapsed Christians baptized as children and raised in the Sunday School into people without much of any religious background for whom Sunday School was a concept as foreign to them as the creed."
Oh, and Lutheran laymen heard pastors note... "I suspect I am not alone in my ambivalence to Sunday School."
In fact, the main change in (church growth) numbers from the Lutheran heydays of the 50s and 60s is the drop in the birth rate of Lutherans. Contributing to this were birth control pills, a shrinking number of farmers and middle class due to increased leftist socialism (the Demonicrat Party) and increased non-European immigration, and the effects of liberal heterodoxies tolerated in the LCMS and its seminaries, even going back to the 50s and 60s.
Isn't it the history of Sunday School that makes it a foreign concept to the Church at large? As I understand it, the origins were in outreach with an emphasis on moral improvement of the "unchurched" and working class youth, which were seen to be degrading English society.
Actually, I've never heard a Pastor question Sunday School. Rather the ones in my life have defended it strenuously without too much meat to their apologies. I've always wondered if Sunday School isn't one of those things that we wring our hands over doing better rather then asking whether we should be doing it at all (See Pr. Peters post from yesterday). It seems to me that the history of the Church provides better models for combating secularism and handing over the faith to younger generations (catechetical services, emphasis on intergenerational services and life together, liturgical renewal, following the pattern of the Church year, etc.).
Finally, Carl I think your observation about the impact of contraception and liberal politics actually supports the questions raised by the blog. If the generations that parented and were part of the "heydays" of the 50s and 60s succumb to such cultural pressures, despite populating Sunday Schools across the nation, what does that say about the value of Sunday School in forming mature Christians.
Ambivalence about the Sunday School means this -- I wonder if the Sunday School has not discouraged the primary religious education of the home... it means I wonder how this institution will survive a culture in which more folks did not attend Sunday School than did... that is all. I never said I was in favor of disbanding the Sunday School or any such thing. I have conflicting thoughts about it. Is that so bad????
Underneath it all is the recognition that Lutherans were not the first to the Sunday School and now we will have to decide whether or not this (rather recent) institution is worth the effort to renew and revitalize. That is the basic question. Is the Sunday School the best, the only, the most suitable way to, in the words of the second commenter, "form mature Christians"????
I wonder if the Sunday School has not discouraged the primary religious education of the home... "
According to the Christian Cyclopedia, Sunday schools began to appear in the Missouri Synod. in the 1840s (the Synod was founded in 1847). These Sunday schools were held even though the Synod still emphasized its parochial schools as well as Christenlehre, a catechetical instruction for adults and children on Sunday morning or afternoon. The Synod opposed the doctrinal laxity of other Protestant Sunday schools of that time.
In the late 19th century, Sunday schools were more evident in city churches for children who went to public schools, weven though they were regarded as competition for (or an excuse for not attending) the parochial school (Moving Frontiers, CPH, 1964, pp.354-5; 367-8; 393-4). some Missouri Synod support was evident, in recognizing Sunday schools as an initial stage for a new mission congregation until they set up a parochial school. According to the Christian Cyclopedia, the Sunday School was not officially accepted until around the time of WWI.
During the 20th century, the Missouri Synod passed several doctrinal resolutions supporting its Sunday Schools:
1926 Resolution that congregations, pastors, and teachers have a duty to properly train and teach Sunday School teachers.
1947 Resolution that Sunday school teachers should be carefully selected and supported, for the sake of good doctrine.
1947 Resolution that evangelism and soul-winning are to be a major objective of Sunday schools.
1956 Resolution that the Synod repents of its sin of neglecting its Sunday Schools (no mention of "ambivalence")
The question of whether the Sunday School is "the best, the only, the most suitable way" is an open-ended one. Instead, one should be asking whether there is another better and more feasible way than having Sunday School as a part of Lutheran education of children in today's Lutheran congregation for forming mature Christians.
Another question is whether Sunday (and parochial) schools are to be primarily for the education of member children or as evangualism tools to attract non-Christian children and their parents. Since the 70s, that has been an ambivalent issue in Missouri Synod congregations.
Whether the question is open or closed, I think the answer is yes.
I would like to suggest that perhaps a change from SS to something more fruitful might be helpful. I was a Christian Educator in the Lutheran Church until my retirement. During that time the time spent with children and youth on a weekday afternoon gave us 90
% participation. ON a Sunday morning only slightly over 50% for some of the same reasons you mention here. Not only did that program after school (2.5 hours) give us more time with the kids but also involved the parents and helped them better understand what and how to teach their kids at home. Things like prayers, devotions, etc. It is easy to tell parents to teach their kids, but many don't know what to teach or how.
Elsa Quanbeck
Carl Vehse wrote:
"Another question is whether Sunday (and parochial) schools are to be primarily for the education of member children or as evangelism tools to attract non-Christian children and their parents. Since the 70s, that has been an ambivalent issue in Missouri Synod congregations."
As an LCMS father of two boys in the local LCMS grade school, I can attest that half of the student body is NOT Lutheran, nor do they wish to join the church anytime soon. Non-Lutheran (usually non-denominational church) parents are looking for an alternative to the nonsensical Common Core curriculum found in the public schools. Having their kids learn a little about Jesus while at the school is a "nice" afterthought. Using the LCMS grade school or high school as an evangelism tool has failed. I hope that Synod will address this issue.
I would love to see Higher Things begin a Sunday school pilot project for junior and senior high students. Give Sunday school to Higher Things and let us see what they can do with it. I also had hoped Higher Things would form a Christian alternative to the Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Boy Scouts and use Sunday school as a meeting time for the new group.
Thoughts?
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