Shepherd the Flock

Let me make myself clear before I explain my concerns with Sunday School: I love Sunday School; I believe Sunday School is vital to the health and growth of Christ’s church. I love the interaction, discussion, questions, one-on-one, teaching, depth, and encouragement that comes from a regular participation in a Sunday School group.

But I must admit, I believe many churches are taking Sunday School to dangerous and unhealthy levels –to the point where they are detrimental to the spiritual health of the Church. Let me explain:

Because of the explosion of mega-churches in this generation (churches with more than 2000 attendees), there has been a significant push in these mega-churches to get their attendees involved in a small group, Sunday School type of program. The necessity of such small groups is quite obvious: with a church so numerically large, the pastor(s) do not have near enough time to personally teach, counsel, lead, pray with, or correct individual members –especially on a week to week, regular basis. In many cases, even life and death circumstances are not enough to garner a meeting or one-on-one time with the ‘big guy’, the senior pastor of the mega-church.

Thus, because the pastor isn’t ‘accessible’, or because it’s clear that members are not sufficiently ‘growing’ from attending the main worship service (packed with 2000+ other members), the necessity of regular, small group interaction becomes apparent.

And again, this has led to a pronounced and major emphasis on one’s involvement in a small group. In fact, many people believe that spiritual growth cannot happen without being dedicated to a small group –despite the fact that scriptures never set forth such an idea.

Nevertheless, I see a great danger in these small groups, particularly in how they are setup in our day. Let me break them down line by line and we can discuss them further in the comments in you like.

Why I believe the modern idea of Sunday School is often biblically lacking and spiritually dangerous:

• Many times, regular Sunday School involvement in small groups is stressed above the regular preaching of the Word in the context of corporate worship. The scriptures, however, clearly set forth the preaching of the Word by a qualified man to be the means for all necessary spiritual life and growth.
• Many if not the vast majority of Sunday School classes in our day are taught led by someone other than a biblically qualified elder. Don’t misunderstand me: I am *not* arguing that all small groups/bible studies should be led by a qualified elder. Instead, this concern arises when, A) there is not a plurality of elders in the church, B) there is not a sufficient number of biblically qualified elders in the church, or C) the church is too large for the elder(s)/pastor to be personally accessible to all members of the flock. Thus, what you end up with is that the leader of the Sunday School class becomes the preeminent spiritual authority to each person of the class. Since the church is too large, and/or the leadership is too insufficient/inaccessible to personally meet the needs of the congregation, the small group leader becomes the *acting elder* by default, despite not being biblically qualified to do so. Instead of having an elder on-hand to teach, instruct, counsel, guide, correct, admonish, rebuke, pray with, learn from, follow after, and even set forth profitable reading/study material for private use, a small group leader must fill this role by necessity of the fact that there are no elders available to do so.
• On top of the previous point, many times Sunday School teachers are assigned as teachers on a voluntary basis (whoever wants to do it), instead of whether or not they actually have the ability and character to lead, teach, and instruct. This unfortunately leads to false/incorrect teaching, poor examples to follow, and spiritual famine.
• Segregation by gender is often a very good thing for small groups, but segregation by age, particularly with children and teenagers, should cause concern. Children need to be taught, instructed, and corrected by their parents, the authority and guide that God has placed in children’s lives until they reach an age of maturity. This does not mean that the child cannot/should not be taught by someone other than a parent, but it should mean that the parent is always close by when a child is being instructed. Children’s church, and by extension, youth groups, often have charismatic, likable teachers heading them up –teachers that are much more concerned with being cool and connecting with the young person’s culture than they are with dispensing the Word of God. Thus, with age segregation, you again end up with a youth pastor or Children’s church leader becoming the preeminent spiritual ‘authority’ in the young person’s life, rather than an elder and/or parent like God intends. And this is much more dangerous when considering how impressionable children and teenagers are to the people/teaching they are surrounded with.
• On top of the previous point, many times age segregation causes the Sunday School hour to be the preeminent hour in the child’s/teenager’s church experience. How can we expect our children and teenagers to listen to and take serious an hour of expository preaching when the previous (or following) hour was spent hanging out with friends their age, often times playing games and/or laughing at their cool youth pastor? Age segregation and youth groups, by default, undermine the effectiveness of the preaching of God’s word because they will always be much more appealing to our flesh and attention. This is a scary thing indeed when considering that preaching is the preeminent means of spiritual growth in the life of the Christian.
• Sunday School and small groups are often more like 12 step programs that help with emotional healing or fuel personal, inward experiences. Instead, Sunday School should be a time of intense Biblical teaching with the opportunity to tackle objections and ask questions.
• And on top of the previous point, Sunday School, because of its shift to personal experience and healing, has come to supersede the effectiveness of the preaching of God’s word. Thus, many church-goers come to prefer the small group much more than the corporate service –which is the exact opposite of God’s design for the church. Personal and small group study/worship should prepare us for the corporate aspect when all ages/races/genders are gathered; not the other way around.

Those are just a few of my thoughts. I voice them not to shout out at the darkness, but to hopefully point out some things that others may have overlooked.

Regardless, the entire corporate church experience (every aspect of it), biblically speaking, should strive to:

• Exalt the preaching of the Word in the context of corporate worship as the chief means of grace.
• Exalt the authority of the biblically qualified elders (1 Tim 3, Titus 1) and the heads of homes (fathers) above any and all other authorities in the life of the believer. This is not to say that the elders or fathers hold absolute authority, for their authority certainly stops with scripture. But it is to say that God has specifically ordained and gifted these men to be the preeminent instructors, teachers, and spiritual authorities in the lives of His people.
• Exalt the corporate gathering of God’s people as the preeminent picture of heavenly, God-pleasing worship, and the chief environment in which we grow and please our God.

What undermines these things, my friends, should cause some serious re-evaluation. I firmly believe that it is much better to have no Sunday School at all rather than to compromise and setup a system that deflects the realities of the three points above.

I’m concerned at the direction that Sunday School has taken in our culture, just as I am likewise concerned with the direction the corporate aspect has taken as well. But with Sunday School, I find that the errors are more often overlooked and ignored because there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of biblical instruction in regards to the meeting of small groups. Hopefully, by God’s grace, we’ll keep our eyes open to some of these dangerous trends, striving to protect Christ’s church where He has set forth boundaries, while we continually examine our practices with the scriptures so as to be found well pleasing in God’s eyes