All Star Sunday School Training

Sunday School is not an agency separate or apart from the Church but is, perhaps, the best-structured agency in the local church for carrying out most effectively the teaching ministry of Christ. This arm of the Church is divided into four parts: reaching, teaching, winning and caring.

Just as the New Testament Church was built on teaching and preaching (see Acts 5:42), so the modern biblical Church must be built on Bible study in Sunday School and exhortation in the preaching service. Sunday School is still functionally defined as reaching people, so you can teach the people to win them to Christ and then care for those people spiritually. This fourfold nature of Sunday School is perhaps best expressed in an Old Testament verse that has often been used in the historic Sunday School conventions. “Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the LORD your God and carefully observe all the words of this law” (Deut. 31:12). This verse reflects the four distinct areas of Sunday School ministry.

Sunday School Is the Reaching Arm of the Church

First, Sunday School is the arm that reaches all ages for Christ. “Reaching” is defined as making contact with a person and motivating him or her to give an honest hearing to the gospel. Since evangelism is giving out the gospel, reaching is basically preevangelism, for it gets people to listen to the gospel. In our text, it is expressed in the word “gather.” Note that those who gathered are identified as

• fathers,
• mothers,
• little ones or children, and
• the stranger.Most church members have someone within their sphere of influence who is a stranger to the Church and who could be gathered into the Church.

Sunday School Is the Teaching Arm of the Church

Second, Sunday School is the teaching arm of the Church. “Teaching” means guiding the learning

activities that meet human needs. The first step of teaching is expressed in the verse by the words “that they may hear.” The ultimate step of teaching is “that they may learn.”

Sunday School Is the Winning Arm of the Church

Sunday School is also the arm of the Church that wins people to Christ. “Winning” is defined as communicating the gospel in an understandable manner and motivating a person to respond to Christ. The Old Testament expression “fear the Lord” means to bring a person to reverential trust of God. It was a concept of salvation. Today we might describe a person who “fear[s] the LORD” as a person who receives Christ, or trusts the Lord, for salvation.

Sunday School Is the Caring Arm of the Church

Finally, Sunday School is the arm of the Church that gives spiritual care to all members. One of the objectives of every Sunday School is to spiritually care for all so that all will “carefully observe all the words of this law.” Some people call this nurturing; others call it maturing.

Sunday School is the reaching, teaching, winning and caring arm of the Church. However, this definition becomes a mosaic when applied to individual churches. Just as it takes all the pieces of tile to make up a mosaic, so it takes all four aspects of the definition to describe a beautiful Sunday School. The beauty of the mosaic can be destroyed when we focus on one section of the mosaic and lose the whole picture. This happens when a church demonstrates a strong emphasis of only one aspect, such as gaining an abundance of visitors because of a dominant emphasis on a bus outreach ministry. The focus on outreach causes a church to lose the perspective of teaching, winning or caring.

Some churches have strong teaching Sunday Schools with a deep commitment to Bible mastery, but they have no outreach. Other Sunday Schools are committed to soul-winning; their success is measured by how many people they have won to Christ or prepared for church membership, but they do not have a passion to oversee students to help them grow in Christ. Finally, some Sunday Schools do a great job of caring for their students but ignore the other three objectives.

As important as each function is, do not forget to build a balanced Sunday School. The healthy Sunday School will perform all four ministries equally. To make your Sunday School healthy, cover the four basics for your students: reach, teach, win and spiritually care.

Elmer Towns is part of the All Star Sunday School Training Team. For details of meetings with Elmer Towns see  http://allstarsundayschool.com/

If you were to charge people to come to Sunday School training do you think you would have more people come, or less?

This was the big surprise and learning for me this year. Because of the economy, my speaking schedule is down considerably. Churches and Associations are being hit hard by the economy. Many are having to lay off staff. (I have a few resumes from friends if you are looking.) Long before they lay off staff they will quit hiring outside speakers to come in and do training. This is true, even though training is constantly shown to correlate with church growth.

So I offered a new plan. I have adjusted it a bit, so let me talk about how it is now. Rather than charging the host my honorarium, I charge the host a much smaller deposit. Thirteen years on the road has taught me bad things happen when the host does not put down a deposit. I have very few cancelations since I started requiring non-refundable deposits. They don’t walk away from the meeting due to a scheduling conflict when they have some skin in the game.

Most of the cost of the event is paid for not by the host church or Association but by the individuals who attend. The current plan calls for individuals to pay $20; $30 for married couples attending together. The host gets $5 of this back to help cover their expenses. If all goes well, it should be free to the host.

We live in an era–and we may be in this era for some time to come–where churches no longer have $1500 or so to pay the expenses to hire an outside speaker to come in and do training. But, people still have $20 to spend on a night of training–if they think it is valuable. More on that later.

The big question is this: how will charging for the event affect attendance? Will people not come if they have to pay for it?

Here is the big surprise: more came. Several of my DOMs told me, “This is the best attended event we have had in years.” I read a book recently that explained why. Here is an excerpt:

Look, for example, at this witty little experiment. Baba Shiv, a neuroeconomist at Stanford, supplied a group of people with Sobe Adrenaline Rush, an “energy” drink that was supposed to make them feel more alert and energetic. (The drink contained a potent brew of sugar and caffeine that, the bottle promised, would impart “superior functionality.”) Some participants paid full price for the drinks, while others were offered a discount. After drinking the product, participants were asked to solve a series of word puzzles. Shiv found that people who’d paid discounted prices consistently solved about 30 percent fewer puzzles than the people who’d paid full price for the drinks. The subjects were convinced that the stuff on sale was much less potent, even though all the drinks were identical. “We ran the study again and again, not sure if what we got had happened by chance or fluke,” Shiv says. “But every time we ran it, we got the same results.”

Why did the cheaper energy drink prove less effective? According to Shiv, consumers typically suffer from a version of the placebo effect. Since they expect cheaper goods to be less effective, they generally are less effective, even if the goods are identical to more expensive products. This is why brand-name aspirin works better than generic aspirin and why Coke tastes better than cheaper colas, even if most consumers can’t tell the difference in blind taste tests. “We have these general beliefs about the world-for example, that cheaper products are of lower quality-and they translate into specific expectations about specific products,” said Shiv. “Then, once these expectations are activated, they start to really impact our behavior.” The rational brain distorts the sense of reality, so the ability to properly assess the alternatives is lost. Instead of listening to the trustworthy opinions generated by our emotional brains, we follow our own false assumptions.

Jonah Lehrer. How We Decide (Kindle Locations 1694-1704). Kindle Edition.

The research indicates that if we could test it, we would like find that people get more out of meetings they pay for. What we seem to know now is that more people tend to show up.

I’d like to invite you to consider hosting a meeting under the new plan. If it goes well, it will be free for you the host church or Association. For details, see  http://www.joshhunt.com/conference2.htm

Reaching people is an ongoing process. Oftentimes we reach out to a prospect with a visit or phone call, and then that prospect never hears from us again. Essentially we have implemented a hit-and-run outreach strategy. We hit them with the gospel, and then they never hear from us again. Now, let me be quick to say that this is better than never hitting them with the gospel. However, it is usually an ineffective way to reach them. Most people are not going to respond to a gospel message or an invitation to church from a person they have just met for the first time. People today are skeptical and need to have a trust level with the messenger before they buy in to his message. Therefore, outreach must be seen as a process, a relationship-building process. The ones who should build that relationship are those in their life stage, which would be someone in their prospective Sunday School class. This is the reason we have implemented the MTV strategy at First Baptist Church Woodstock.

This strategy provides an easy way to employ continual “touches” on the prospect that will help build a relationship. When a class receives a prospect, we ask them to make an initial visit. After the initial visit we ask them to follow up each week thereafter with sequential contacts of Mail, Telephone, and Visit. The “touches” on the prospect look like this:

• Week 1: Make initial visit.
• Week 2: Mail them a note (can be e-mail).
• Week 3: Telephone them.
• Week 4: Visit them again.

If we still have not gotten them connected, then we continue the Mail, Telephone, Visit cycle over and over again until we do get them connected in Sunday School or they instruct us to leave them alone. The MTV strategy gives every class a hands-on, practical way to carry out the church’s mandate to be Great Commission people. It also gives every person a means by which they can get involved in reaching others. Some will not be comfortable making a visit, but they might be comfortable writing a note or making a phone call.

Taylor, Allan (2009-06-01). Sunday School in HD: Sharpening the Focus on What Makes Your Church Healthy (pp. 50-51). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Join Allan Taylor and the rest of the All Star Team in Charlotte on Feb 17 – 18.http://allstarsundayschool.com/

Jesus’ method of teaching was not exclusive to talking. The one and true Master Teacher spent time with His disciples so that He could model truth for them. He did not just tell them; He took them. Sunday School teachers should follow Christ’s example and do class ministry projects by going together to witness, visit hospitals, meet people’s needs, etc. The teacher can personify biblical truth to his class members as they do ministry together.

Society’s approach to learning today is very passive. I believe television has fostered noninteractive, nonthinking students and the entertainment industry has conditioned us to sit and receive. We are asked to do very little or even to contemplate anything. Our only responsibility is to turn the television on and then be fed. It seems that when entertainment was radio and reading, we had more creative, imaginative, and involved learners. Progression in technology seems to have produced regression in thinking. Today’s Bible teacher must recognize the dilemma that many people who sit in their class have become passive receptors. Therefore, drawing people out of their passive comfort zone is a challenge for any teacher and yet should be the goal of every teacher. Teachers cannot be satisfied with class members showing up merely to watch or be entertained. We must lead them to be discoverers and examiners of biblical teachings.

We must adhere to the principle that maximum involvement equals maximum learning. Everyone should be engaged in the learning process. I have always felt that the greatest thing I could do for my class was to get them to think for themselves. God gave them a mind for a reason. If I could engage them in the learning aspect of the Bible, I always felt my chances of engaging them in the doing aspect of the Bible were greatly enhanced.

We must expand this principle and realize that maximum involvement equals maximum learning, and maximum learning equals maximum obedience. When people discover truth for themselves, they are more apt to obey that truth. Of course, the opposite is true. A lack of involvement produces a lack of learning. Spoon-fed truth is not often digested. Therefore, using a variety of methods becomes a must for every teacher. Everyone does not learn the same way. As more methods are used, more people can connect with the lesson. As members connect, they become more interested, more involved, and consequently, more obedient. We must adhere to the principle that maximum involvement equals maximum learning.

After our church went to a new Sunday morning schedule, it provided an hour of Sunday School where there was no worship service. This gave Pastor Johnny an opportunity to attend Sunday School so he visited some Sunday School classes with the goal of joining one. (He did join one and is in Sunday School every week.) One day in a staff meeting he shared about visiting classes and said to me, “Allan, we have some wonderful classes, and we have some teachers who really know their Bibles, but I have noticed that many of them lecture every week. I think we want to get people interacting in a Sunday School class.” “I agree, Pastor, we do want people interacting in Sunday School,” I replied, “and I think I know why so many teachers lecture and where the problem lies. Pastor, you are the problem.” Now at this point I was going to have some fun or many regrets! Pastor grinned and said, “All right, tell me more.” I then explained that it was really a compliment to him. He was such a great Bible teacher, a wonderful communicator of truth, and so passionate about the Word of God that all the teachers wanted to be like him. When teachers hear the Word proclaimed, they most always hear it preached from the pulpit. Unconsciously their mind is conditioned that preaching or lecturing is the way to do it. They mimic that style in their Sunday School class. We must be careful that we do not turn Sunday School into an age-division worship service. Sunday School is to be distinctly different from a worship service.

As we involve people, not only do they learn more effectively, but their retention rate increases as well. Retention is a by-product of concentration. Therefore, teachers cannot afford to let class members sit on the sidelines each week and watch the teacher play the game. They must be engaged in the game with the teacher. Members discovering truth are involved; involvement produces concentration; concentration produces retention; retention means they have grasped a truth. They are positioned to obey because they understand. It is shameful for the teacher to take “the word of God [which] is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12) and render it dead, weak, and duller than a butter knife to the unengaged member.

Taylor, Allan (2009-06-01). Sunday School in HD: Sharpening the Focus on What Makes Your Church Healthy (pp. 65-68). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Join Allan Taylor and the rest of the All Star Team in Charlotte on Feb 17 – 18.http://allstarsundayschool.com/

This year’s big surprise was that paid Sunday School training events were better attended than free ones.

We live in an era where time is more valuable than money. People will sooner give up their money than their time. They will only give up their time if they perceive the event will be valuable. One way to convince people something is valuable is to charge for it. I got some insight into this from, (of all places), research on wine tasting.

Researchers had people taste wine and were told the price of the wine. The researchers lied. They mixed the price tags. Sometimes people were told the expensive wine was the expensive wine, while other times they were told the cheap wine was expensive.

People consistently described the wine that they were told was expensive as tasting better. Experts didn’t do any better at evaluating the wine:

When the scientists repeated the experiment with members of the Stanford University wine club, they got the same results. In a blind tasting, these semi-experts were also misled by the made-up price tags. — Jonah Lehrer. How We Decide (Kindle Locations 1715-1716). Kindle Edition.

This misconception is not just with wine tasters. People report name-brand aspirin that costs more relieves headaches better than the cheaper off-brand. When researchers switched the labels, people report better relief from the cheap aspirin that came out of the name-brand bottle.

People report that Coke tastes better than generic store brand cola–unless you switch the labels.

Perhaps this explains why attendance was better at meetings where there was a fee to attend.

There has never been a better time to host a training event at your church. If attendance is good, it should be free for the host church.

The best time to schedule a training event is adjacent to an existing event. This way, you only pay $200 for travel. Click here to check out the current schedule.

For details on hosting a conference, click here.

There’s an emerging trend that merits consideration in the peoplegrouping conversation. After decades in which coed classes dominated the scene in Sunday morning classes and weekday small groups, single gender classes are making a comeback. And not just among adults! One of the most consistently effective student Sunday Schools I know of has organized all its classes–for both middle and high schoolers–for girls and boys. In fact, because of tremendous growth coupled with lack of space, this thriving student ministry now meets in a school building. Mi ssionary Mentality 14 Transformational Class Students who ride buses to and from the church campus for worship usually do not have a room for their class. Instead they gather around tables in an open area. The tables are labeled by grade and gender and facilitated by a teacher of the same gender. This trend is less prominent in classes for kids, although it would certainly be feasible to have separate tables for girls and boys within the same classroom if–and it’s a big if–you actually have dedicated men to staff those tables. Come on, guys! Man up! Boys need to see men who love Jesus and are willing to teach them about Him! Get some missionary mentality!

Join David Francis and the rest of the All Star Team. Seehttp://allstarsundayschool.com/

Missional Sunday School classes are driven by two principles on which they refuse to compromise: open groups practicing open enrollment. 17 Much has been written about open groups versus closed groups. I’m actually an advocate for both. In fact, I believe that both discipleship groups and small groups function best as closed groups.

D-Groups

Discipleship groups are typically short-term with high accountability for preparation and participation around a course of study that involves deeper biblical content than the typical Sunday School class. In “D-groups,” disciples are challenged to grow in one or more of these areas: devoting themselves to being disciples, declaring their identity in Christ, developing spiritual disciplines, displaying Christlike character, defending the faith, discipling others–beginning with their own household, deploying their gifts in missional ministry, and/ or depending desperately on the Holy Spirit. D-groups work best as closed groups–that is, once the group starts, it is no longer open to additional participants.

Small Groups

Sunday School classes and D-groups have one thing in common with gatherings typically called “small groups.” They all tend to be more effective if they are actually small! But the term small groups usually implies more than just size. A common goal of small group ministry is developing deeper biblical community among a group of believers and some not-yet-believers who long to “do life together” in an environment of redemptive trust. Trust requires time. With the same people. That’s why small groups tend to be closed, whether they’re designed to be or not! North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia, answers a frequently-asked question about small groups on one of its Web sites:

Q: What makes North Point’s groups model unique from others?

A: Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of our model is the closed group structure.

We believe relationships take time to form and anything that gets in the way of the group building relational capital with one another works against this goal. Groups stay closed for a predetermined time of twelve to twenty-four months. At that time they multiply to form Vibrant leadership 18 Transformational Class at least two new groups. (If a group loses members along the way, they are free to add new couples or individuals if everyone in the group agrees.)6

I think closed groups are great. In fact, if I was practicing Christian Education in a local church today, I would strive for a merger of a small group and D-group ministry. That’s exactly what Pastor Nelson Searcy and his team did at New York City’s multi-campus Journey Church, as described in the book Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups. Groups, which are closed once they start, start and stop three times each year. That’s not so different from the discipleship trimester approach popular in many churches except that Journey’s groups can meet anywhere on any day instead of on Sunday or Wednesday at the church campus.

Sunday School Classes Designed as Open Groups

What distinguishes Sunday School classes, including weekday off campus small groups that are functionally equivalent to Sunday School, is an open group strategy. Sunday School classes study the Bible, and therefore help people discover the eight “Ds” identified with D-groups (p. 17) on a foundational level. Sunday School classes also help people connect and experience fellowship, ministry, and a sense of community, though probably more on a social level than on the intimate level that is the goal of many small groups. So what makes it open? This short definition explains it best:

An Open Group Expects New People Every Week. 

Join David Francis and the rest of the All Star Team. See http://allstarsundayschool.com/