September 13, 2021
Yes, my old church actually tried to cancel Sunday School.
Story time.
For context, I went to a non-denominational church located on the campus of a major state university. Although non-denominational, because of the local culture of my city, there was always a strong Southern Baptist vibe. A lot of people who attended the church and worked for the church were, and still are, comfortable with tradition.
Like most moderately-sized churches, this one had a strong youth group. As is tradition, the youth would attend Sunday school on Sunday mornings during the regular service times, then come back Sunday evening for youth group.
I served as a youth leader at this church for many years, so I was heavily involved in the program. At one point, the youth director—a great guy then and still a great guy today—went on a “serving” kick. He really wanted to instill into the church’s youth that serving others was an important part of being a Christian.
It’s a decent message, I suppose, but these days I’m a lot quicker to point out that the best way to truly serve others is work on yourself first. That being said, it’s hard for high school students to work on themselves when they don’t have much freedom from their parents. Messages like that tend to be more helpful when they’re older.
Anyway, the youth director took stock one day and realized that the youth were being instructed during Sunday school, instructed during youth group, and instructed yet again during the week (from their “community group” Bible study). It was a lot of instruction without much action, so the youth director wondered if one of those periods of instruction could be turned into serving. He chose the time period traditionally dedicated to Sunday school.
Instead of having the kids be further instructed in the Bible on Sunday mornings, he wanted them to serve. The tasks he had in mind weren’t big—it was stuff the church already needed done on Sunday mornings:
- Hand out pamphlets to church members as they came in.
- Assist the adults in the child care area.
- Pass around the offering baskets.
- Pick up the sanctuary after the church service ended.
You know—basic stuff that any high school student is totally capable of doing.
The youth director pitched the idea to the head pastor. The head pastor was hesitant at first—canceling Sunday school and replacing it with something else was quite a leap, after all. However, the head pastor said he trusted the youth director and his judgment and agreed to a trial period. The only thing the head pastor wanted my friend to do was hold a meeting with the youth parents and inform them of the change.
So my friend the youth director invested a lot of time drawing up his plan, preparing his presentation, and finally held a parents meeting one evening in the youth building. Myself and several other leaders were present to show our support.
There, the youth director laid out his plan and explained rather eloquently why he wanted to make the switch and why it would be beneficial for the coming generation of the church body.
And the parents lost their fucking skulls.
These parents just could not wrap their heads around their high school kids doing anything else on Sunday morning besides sitting in Sunday school, glued to a chair, and being taught Bible stories by a church volunteer.
I sat helplessly and watched as my friend was accosted by very irate parents saying ridiculous things about why his idea was terrible and refused to actually listen to his well-reasoned thoughts behind the decision.
I’ll never forget the declaration/threat made by one of the more outspoken dads at the meeting: “All I know is that come Sunday morning, my son will be in Sunday school, even if he has to go to a different church.”
I had no idea at the time that what I was witnessing was not an isolated incident. Now that I’m many years out of the Church, it’s incredibly obvious to me how quickly Christians can turn on anyone or anything that threatens their sense of tradition, normalcy, or control. This incident was the very first time I saw it first-hand. Back then, I didn’t understand the full extent of what I was seeing.
Despite the parents meeting exploding in my friend’s face, Sunday school would still go on to be temporarily put on hold since the head pastor was in favor of the idea. I wasn’t around to see how it all panned out; I’d just finished college and my first job had me working on Sundays, so my roll as a youth leader was greatly diminished at the time. I go into more detail about this story in my article How I left My Church.
However, since I’m still on my old church’s email list, I can see that Sunday school has since been reinstated. I’m not surprised. It’s hard to break from tradition in these churches. That’s one of the main reasons why the Church is such sharp decline today.