Wayne Poling, Senior Sunday School Specialist at Lifeway Christian Resources in Nashville, Tennessee shares that Sunday School is the foundational strategy in a local church for leading people to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and for building on-mission Christians through open Bible study groups that engage people in evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, ministry, and worship.
I feel that many churches have lost the understanding of why we have Sunday School. For many churches Sunday School has become a Sunday morning event with no thought given to why we have Sunday School. Some feel that Sunday School is just for the purpose of having Bible study on Sunday morning.
Statistics indicate that if a person is involved in a small group Bible study he is more likely to remain active in the church whereas the person who is not involved in a small group Bible study tends to drop out of church after five years because he has not developed relationships with other Christian believers who can help and encourage him in his journey to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Small group Bible study groups or Sunday School is a vital component of the strategy of the church to accomplish the great commission that Jesus gave to all of His disciples to “Go and make disciples”.
What do you think? Respond to this blog and give me your thoughts.
2 Comments
Bob Cline · April 28, 2012 at 12:42 pm
Sunday School should be the catalyst for the members walk and what I mean by that is we should be structuring our classes so that we attempt to reach all members with encouragement as well as challenge them to grow. We need to be more focused not only on bible study on Suday but discipleship Mon – Saturday. We are establishing care team leaders in our class and our first meeting is May 6 – I’m very excited about this. This is the first step to really focusing on the class member and meeting their needs. We will also have a mission coordinator to plan different opportunities our class can do – not just meeting monthly for fun and fellowship – but we should be meeting monthly to perform some service – and then we can fellowship afterwards – at least that is the direction I’m trying to take our class.
Ron Moore · May 15, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Bob,
Sounds great! Care Group Leaders are an excellent way to keep in touch with members and minister to their needs.
Ron