Sunday school: The Caring Village

Elder Lucious “Hype” Conway, Columnist

American Sunday schools need a standard

Changing culture alone or increased competition from media, family time demands or
even other churches is not feeding the Sunday school failure frenzy in America. The lack
of Bible literacy or the desire for it in Sunday school leaders undermines Sunday school’s
main premise that a biblical education is important. Today this is the dilemma we face.
There was a time many generations ago when Biblical education was paramount, which
time it seems has passed.

The communities of Sunday school: the village that cares for the children and teaches
them morality and aids them with literacy; especially in the African American culture,
was once our mainstay. More African American’s learned to read from reading the Bible.
In those days and times when they were not allowed to read, they read the Bible. Thus,
they gained literacy and they gained religious or moral education. Today we’re remiss.

In the African American culture the Bible was the first weapon used to gain literacy skills
and moral direction. And, we must ask ourselves the question Jesus posited in the book of
St. Matthew 7:9:
“Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will
he give him a stone?”

Which brings to mind the question what do we consider bread. Here is where the
community concept is most essential and most important. Even those in our society such
as me who have no children or offspring that they know of have a genetic nature to be a
natural instinct to be a parent or parent type. For even God our Father, though he does not
take on the specific form of man or woman but both man and woman is a parent type and
created from that parent type through a woman without any physical intercourse as we
know it as human being a man a son and this son called to sons. And, as we’ve
progressed in our understanding of scripture and he original translations to date
understand that this term son encompasses the human family.

So we become parents by virtue of age and maturity in response or reaction to those we

encounter in our lives. And, there cannot be an adult whose following Jesus in a church
that does not feel some type of parental relationship to every child they see especially
infants. This is why mothers and fathers in church who see an new infant or a new infant
is Christened or introduced into the congregation, everyone including that child’s
godparents who are usually members of that church or some church understand the role
that they must play in that child’s life with regard to how that child is exposed to them.
And, if they truly care about the child they should be concerned with whether the child is
there (in Sunday school) or not.

This is where the village concept becomes most active. It is where the rubber of the
concept meets the road of reality. In that, you as a member of a church Sunday school,
and if you’re in a church you should be a member of the Sunday school because Biblical
instruction remains important. It teaches us morality and it aids us with literacy as we
grow older.

I believe that our major problem in today’s Sunday school is that the members who run
the Sunday school don’t understand their responsibility to go out into the highways and
hedges and compel men and women to come to God, to Jesus. And, he said in Mt. 19:14:
“Suffer the children…”
And, in Mk. 10:16 the Scripture says,
“Jesus picked them up in His arms and He blessed them.”
These weren’t his biological children, but these were children that he chose to, was able
to, through his encounter with their parents; provoke their parents to want Him to bless
their children.

So when we approach a community that’s nontraditional in the sense of the broader

America or the greater America we are finding a new concept in Latino and African
American communities and even in some American Indian communities. We find in the
urban and rural areas within the middle and lower socio-economic classes moral training
has been abandoned.

And, what is Scripture if not moral instruction? It teaches us basic values like The Ten
Commandments, or the Greatest Commandment or the Golden Rule. All of those things
come from the Scripture. But when we don’t encounter them and understand the context
in which they come or what they mean we lose something when the preacher preaches to
us from a book we don’t really know.

It does what it is supposed to do by building our faith but it does not do what it needs to
do to prepare us to preach and build the faith of others because we must be able to relate
our current life experiences with the life experiences of those who recorded and those
who recorded life about the times of the Scriptures.

So American Sunday school in general and African American Sunday school in particular
needs a standard by which we determine if we’re actually providing an education first. If
we actually have an educational construct, as any other public or private educational
institution teaching any other subject such as math, science, geography or writing then we
have at least the same standard as the formal educational institutions currently instructing
us and our children. We teach Bible stories and the morality they bring and teach. It’s a
kind of junior philosophy as a subject matter.

An online excerpt from “Second Set of Responses to Marva Collins, Carpe Diem Page
and to the First Set of Responses’ reads:
“With the core curriculum requirements in place in Metro [read Sunday school]
and the checklists that the teachers use, I don’t see how anyone could question
that the kids are getting what they need academically. Teaching a child from any
walk of life that he/she is responsible for his/her actions and that all choices have
consequences, good or bad, is the selling factor of the program in my eyes.
 If you teach a child responsibility and keep them in a good academic
setting, I can’t help but think all the rest will come! Of course, I am not an
educated and experienced educator. Am I too naive? Also the big emphasis
on literature is appealing to me. A love of reading can ONLY lead a child [up]
down the right path.”

The above excerpt lays out both the philosophy behind any viable Sunday school
program but, the plan of action as well, beginning with the core curriculum. Here is
where the standards are established. Without these standards recruitment becomes a non-
existent failure.

The tradition of announcing Sunday school and printing its time does not really promote
recruitment. Recruitment requires convincing, approaching, persuading, OUTREACH.
However, reaching out to someone for their betterment and not knowing how their
interaction with you will truly better them is a hard sell without a core curriculum.

God has given us the helps of administrations (I Cor. 12:5) we must avail ourselves of
them. If you’re having problems discovering them in your church call, email or write me.
All my help is free and without monetary cost.