I Have Loved Sunday School

I grew up in Sunday School.  From the time I was three years old and we were going to church at Augustana Lutheran, the church where my father grew up, I went to Sunday school every Sunday.  Even when we visited my grandparents in southwestern Minnesota, I went to Sunday School.  I didn't especially enjoy going to Sunday School when we visited a strange church, but I went.  They sent a postcard back to my Sunday School letting them know that I had attended.

I loved Sunday School, mostly.  I loved my teachers, who were not my parents, and who taught me that other adults in the church cared about me.  I loved learning the stories and playing the games with the other students, some of whom were my friends.  I liked when we drew pictures of churches, but then our teacher told us that the church wasn't the Building, it was the People inside who were the church.  I remember learning about the Old Testament and the New Testament, and about the parts of the liturgy, too:  Collect, Kyrie, Agnus Dei.

One week we had a Bible story about forgiveness, about how Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive.  Seven times?  When Jesus told him, "70 X 7", our teacher told us to try to figure the problem out.  But since we hadn't learned long division yet, all we could come up with was that it must be A Very Large Number.

Another time I was in 6th grade Sunday School and we were giving our teacher a bad time.  I think we were already thinking that this was boring and we didn't want to study the lesson.  Our teacher was a new member of the church, a young dad with three little girls.  We were giving him a tough time, so he decided that he would just share a little of his faith story with us.  He told us that they had had one other daughter, who had died of leukemia, and how that affected his faith.  I still remember that.

So, I grew up in Sunday School, and I learned some things.  I learned some things about relationships.  I learned some things about the church.  I learned some things about the Bible, although there were some gaps. For example,  I did not have a very good idea about how the stories went together, for one thing.  This was true even though I went both to church and to Sunday School every single week.

So I have to admit that Sunday School was not perfect, and it is even less perfect now.  Perfect attendance is rare now, for one thing.  It is hard to find enough teachers, and even if you find enough teachers, it is hard to find enough students who really want to go.  There are plenty of other options on Sunday morning.  Every parent can teach their child about Jesus, but not every parent can be a good Sunday School teacher.

I have loved Sunday School, but I have to admit that, for a lot of churches, and a lot of children, it isn't working.  They are not learning the stories of the Bible, but most of all, they aren't learning that other adults in the church care about them.

But one of the gifts of the church is still relationships.  It is a place where we can meet each other and know each other across generations, where we will realize that Forgiveness Is a Really Big Number, and where we can share stories and songs and pray and catch faith from one another.

If only we will only make the space.

A Small, Wonderful Mistake

On Sunday at worship, a very small, wonderful thing happened.

During the closing hymn (a rousing rendition of "How Firm a Foundation", by the way), we carried the cross and processed to the entry of the church, as always.  The people turned to face the cross, as always (or at least as they have begun to do during this past year).  We stood there, continuing to sing, as always.

And then, three little girls, about three or four years old, began to dance.

They boldly entered the aisle and moved to their own graceful rhythms.  A fourth little girl, who had turned around to follow the cross, looked at them with wide and wondering eyes -- and then ran out to join them.  Soon there were four little girls, dancing in the aisle.

I wished I had my camera, because I was perfectly situated to take a video of the scene.

I also secretly wished I could join them.  I was a little afraid, I suppose, of what people would think.  I was a little afraid that if I started dancing, they might stop.

And I didn't want them to stop.

During the past year, we have messed with our worship services some.  We are a congregation in redevelopment, which means we are re-learning what it means to be the body of Christ in this place and in this time and for these people, some of whom we are convinced we have not met yet.  So we are talking to each other and asking questions and trying some different things, with various degrees of success.

For this year, we have (for example) gone from two services to one.  People are worshipping together who never worshipped together before.  We are trying to get beyond the catch phrases "contemporary" and "traditional" as well.  For some, the experiment has been a resounding success.  For others, well, the jury is still out.

Our Sunday School schedule has changed as well, at least for this year.  We are trying some intergenerational projects, and a short children's church.  In the past, the children always started church with the whole congregation, and then moved to their classrooms.  This year the children are in Sunday School at the beginning of worship (hence no Children's Message this year), and they come to join us after the sermon, either at the prayers or the peace.

I have to admit, that I do miss seeing the children with their families at the beginning of worship.  Though I have mixed feelings about the "children's message" sometimes, I do miss those opportunities as well.  We probably won't keep the same schedule next year.  It was an experiment.  Some people might think it was a mistake.  We shouldn't have done it.  We should have left well enough alone.

Perhaps.

Two things struck me, though:

1.  If we were worshipping the same way as we did last year, we would have never had this small, wonderful moment.  The children would be safe in their Sunday School classes, with parents hurrying to retrieve them.  This moment was made possible by our 'mistake.'

2.  No one who saw the tiny dancers tried to stop them.  No one told me, "They shouldn't have been doing that in church."  One person even said, "That was an Alleluia moment."

I am not sure which of these two things gives me the most hope.  Perhaps it is the first one, to think that out of our missteps and miscalculations can come such grace.

But the more I think about it, it is the second thing that strikes me as most hopeful for our redevelopment.

One of the things a redevelopment church must learn is to create a space, to embrace a wider welcome for people who do not worship in exactly the same tones that we do.  We don't need to give up liturgy, but we do need to recognize that it's a skeleton that can be fleshed out in many ways, some of them even unscripted.

One of the tasks of a redevelopment church is learning to welcome the stranger.

We might as well start with our children.

Back to School

Adapted from the church newsletter:

Last week, my husband and I accidentally discovered a rabbit’s nest in our back yard.  Well, truthfully, our dog discovered the rabbit’s nest; we discovered her excitement before she was able to do much damage.  I spent the next few hours learning about rabbits’ nests (even though I took science in school I don’t remember learning about rabbits’ nests), and what to do when your dog discovers one.  We also spent the next few days checking the area and the nest to make sure the bunnies were all right beneath the earth.

I have always loved learning new things, but didn’t necessarily think my own backyard was a place to learn them.  I actually loved going to school, even though I wasn’t always good at school (I was good at reading, but math was hard for me).  Every year at this time of the year, I wish I had an excuse to buy a backpack and some spiral notebooks and a few new pencils.  Every year at this time of year, I sort of wish I was going back to school.

What is a disciple of Jesus but a student?  We are all going back to school, really, if we are disciples of Jesus.  And some of the learning is in worship and some of the learning is in Sunday School classrooms and some of the learning is in Bible studies.  And some of the learning is in the strange and familiar places that we travel, and some of the learning is in our own backyards, as we uncover rabbits’ nests and encounter birth and death and suffering and joy.

Truthfully, I could never learned about the rabbits’ nest if I hadn’t been to first grade, and to all the other grades as well.  When we go back to school in the fall, we aren’t just learning:  we’re learning to learn, learning habits that will keep us curious and alive for our whole lives.  And when we come to church, to a Bible study, to serve together, we are learning, but we are also learning to learn:  learning to handle the tools and the wisdom that will keep us curious and alive in our life of faith.

Soon we will bless backpacks, and send students back to school.  At the same time we'll see more families with children back in worship and Sunday school.  And I can't help feeling both excited and wistful at the same time, excited for the new people I will meet and those I will be happy to see again, and wistful because I have missed them most of them in the summer.  I wonder (as I often too) if we haven't been mistaken to tie Sunday School to the School year so closely.  Though there are many reasons why people don't come to worship so often in the summer, I suspect at least one of them is simply that summer has become vacation from worship as well as from school.

But what is a disciple of Jesus but a student? Where-ever we are, where-ever we go, we are learning and being formed by his life.  And worship is one of the places where we get the tools so that we can learn to learn:  so that we can learn to see the presence of God in the weeping stranger, in the tall grass in our back yard, in the faces around our dining room table.  And worship is one of the places where we get the tools, so that we can learn to learn:  where we practice speaking our faith, kneeling in prayer and in service, listening to God, listening to one another.

The rabbits have left the nest.  We don't see them any more.  But there are many more things to learn, in my own backyard, in the sanctuary of my church.  It's true.  Once we learn to learn, there are lessons everywhere.

In Defense of Coloring

An older member of our congregation revealed to me recently that a younger relative of hers (a young parent) had left our congregation long ago because of one thing:  Coloring.

Our Sunday School wasn't serious enough.  "All they did was color," she said, conjuring up for me visions of past Sunday Schools with lots of Bible verse memorization and gold stars for attendance. 

Now, I knew that this wasn't exactly true.  I knew that we had Lectionary based Bible lessons, which also included crafts, not just coloring.  (In fact, I had one mother tell me, long ago, that her young daughter wanted to become Lutheran "because of the crafts.")  But I was cut by the word of judgment, even though it was relayed to me at least ten years after the fact.

No one likes to think that they are falling down on the job of transmitting their faith to their children.  No one likes to think that they are coloring instead of helping children learn Bible stories, pray, and know, in an age- appropriate way, what they believe.  And our congregation does plenty of things besides Sunday School, including special Faith Milestones where chldren learn with their parents about Prayer, The Ten Commandments, Reading the Bible, and the Apostles Creed.

But it's challenging to find ways to share faith with the children.  Especially in this day and age when even on Sunday mornings it's hard to find time to gather regularly.  For one thing, there's hockey (yes, I live in the upper midwest).  Families are mobile and have obligations that interfere with regular Sunday School attendance.

And -- dare I say it? -- even if every child was at every Sunday School session every year, one hour a week is not enough time to share faith, especially if we consider friends, TV, school, and the myriad other things that children are experiencing.  Even if all we do is sit in chairs and memorize Bible verses and recite them for the whole hour, it's only an hour.

It seems to me that if we want to share our faith with the children, it's best if we are doing it all the time, not just for an hour on Sunday, but at mealtimes and in the car and whenever we have the chance.  It also seems to me that coloring is not the problem.  It's not so much how we teach the children, but how and what we teach adults that matters.

So, I think:  go ahead and color with the children.  Color with the children, but teach adults:  teach them to pray and to talk about their own faith, teach them to listen and pay attention to children's questions, teach them the vocabulary of faith:  grace and sacrifice, repentance and love, Jesus.  All the Time.

And then, let them color with the children.