Rethinking Sunday School--Part 3

(It goes without saying again but since this is part 3, it would be really helpful to read parts 1 and 2! :))

As I began, along with Mike, one of our Grace Adventure Club (GAC) leaders, to think through what it might mean to move from a program/information model to a mentoring, coaching, discipling model in Sunday School, we also began to think through the difference in the ways that boys and girls learn and grow.

Generally speaking, the typical Sunday School program skews to the strengths of girls. It's usually highly verbal, highly concept oriented, lots of reading, and, more often than not, is lead by a woman. Boys verbal and reading and concept skills tend to develop later than those skills do in girls. Boys learn best via activity and image/visual. Think about it. Most of the coaching Jesus did took place outside, while on walks, using visuals to mentor his 12 men. He did a lot of demonstrating his message by bringing them on healing trips, by modeling prayer, etc.

What we want to do is put the adventure of following Jesus into the Adventure Club by moving from information/program to modeling, coaching, mentoring, forming, etc. We want our kids formed in Jesus, not just informed about him. That requires a very different model for Sunday School.

Richard Rohr, a Catholic Priest and a man devoted to discipling men, writes this: It is strange how we have forgotten how Jesus formed his disciples. We can read all of the words of Jesus in the Gospels in a matter of hours, but Jesus spent three long years discipling the men who followed him. What he gave them was not so much his words but his example and his energy, his time and his touch. "Where do you live?" said the first two disciples of Jesus. "Come and see," he replied, "so they went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him the rest of that day." (John 1:39)...They knew how energy was passed, and it was not primarily by sermons and books, but by relationships and presence." (From Wild Man to Wise Man, pp. 132-133).

Because boys, teenage boys, and young adult men are on Christianity's endangered species list (Christianity is the only major religion losing boys and men!) we decided to start with our boys in this new model. The concept is simple: Get a couple of men (coaches) to hang out with our boys for 15-20 minutes. Do some fun stuff with them (sports, projects, etc) and then huddle up for an object lesson, or a story having to do with Jesus, and then to pray together.

This has at least three promising impacts: 1) It begins to form in our boys the grace to follow Jesus--not just learn about him but to actively engage in following him. 2) It enables our boys to see men who follow Jesus. To let them draw some masculine spirituality from the men. Again, following Jesus is more caught than taught. We have fewer and fewer everyday guy models of followers of Jesus. 3) It gives men a chance to invest themselves in boys in ways that men are gifted. Most men don't teach Sunday School because the gifts required are usually skewed female. But most guys can play ball with boys. They can build something with them. They can create something with them. And, with some coaching, they can do a short object lesson or talk about a Christian sports hero or tell a story about Jesus (and there are many of us men who do have strong verbal skills).

Our strategy at this point is to get this coaching model ramped up for our 3rd-6th grade boys over the next couple of months. Then, we'll do the same for our 3rd-6th grade girls. The younger children, for the time being, will continue in our GAC program as it works for them at that age.

What will it take? To begin, some men to man-up for Jesus and offer to help mentor our boys. To quote the famous anonymous: Small boys become big men through the influence of big men who care about small boys.

In a few months, it will take some women to step up and invest themselves in our girls.

The combination of worshipping with the big people, being mentored/coached during the message, and then participating in communion with the big people, is a combination I believe that can form boys and girls into dynamic followers of Jesus.

And I'm putting this all in writing so that we can hold each other accountable and see, in the end, if this was a God-idea or indigestion.