One of my classmates in seminary once commented to me that church educational resources are a good example of someone writing pages and pages and pages on a subject and really not saying anything at all. As much as I hate admitting it, they were right. I have seen the stuff I have to use to lead a WELCA Bible study next month and I could probably distill 5 pages of it down to a single simple sentence. Added on, it’s all very esoteric — it took me a few readings to get the main point and I’m a master’s candidate in the field. This is in contrast to the educational material which is usually insipid and dumbed down to the point that a normal five year-old could use the 4th and 5th grade material. It’s almost like they expect people to go from that to an accomplished theologian magically.

This isn’t just exclusive to my church’s publishing house either. Very little church education curriculum is really usable for most churches. (The only curriculum I’ve found that really even works is Concordia Publishing House and that’s only because they have people with Ph.D’s who have worked as DCE’s writing their material.) Everything is either too esoteric or too dumbed down. I feel like Goldilocks — nothing is just right. I had to write my own Confirmation curriculum so that I could get through a lesson with my kids in a normal fashion.

To remedy this (or at least feel like I’m making some kind of difference even if all I’m doing is blowing off steam in my journal), here are the myths of Christian education and the rebuttals.

Myth: You have 20-40 kids under the age of 12 in Sunday school each Sunday.
Reality: If you have 10, you’re pretty lucky. In city and suburban churches, you’ll have more but most churches (even in the suburbs) have very few kids in Sunday school. Kids either don’t go (it means the parents have to stay at church longer) or have spotty attendance.
What This Means: You can’t teach Sunday school as you would a regular grade school class. Having the kids break up into 5 groups of 5 works if you have 25 kids. Most churches don’t, so you have to have teachers who can adapt lesson plans. Could we maybe start with smaller groups and include instructions for adapting it to larger groups?

Myth: Kids need Bible stories written at the reading level of a 5 year-old because they aren’t going to learn them otherwise.
Reality: Kids aren’t being taught basic Bible stories (mostly because a lot of them don’t come to Sunday school) but that doesn’t mean that all the story materials used have to be geared toward 5 year olds.
What This Means: Children in grades 3-5 can comprehend a lot more than kids in grades K-2 and we need to make the work a little more age-appropriate. In the older grades, you can talk about sin and the consequences a lot more.

Myth: Teens want material in flashy packages with videos of people rapping the 10 commandments.
Reality: Teens sit there and make fun of the stuff.
What This Means: Forget the Bible Dude stuff and discuss Scripture and current events with the kids. Most of these kids are skeptical about whether or not this stuff is relevant to their lives. MAKE IT RELEVANT and they will listen.

Myth: Most Confirmation students come in knowing the 10 Commandments, Lord’s Prayer, Apostles’ Creed, and lots of Bible stories.
Reality: Most of these kids couldn’t tell you who Adam was, let alone recall the one about Elijah and the prophets of Baal.
What This Means: We really need 3 years of Confirmation because we have to cover the Small Catechism with the kids as well as the whole Bible. We need materials that convey the stories to the kids without fluffy introductions and materials that make the stuff applicable to their lives. This is a pomo xian generation — everything is relative to them and we have to somehow convince them that there is truth and this is it. We need to stop having them memorize the explanations for the sake of memory work, but rather help them to understand the explanations.

Myth: Every adult Sunday school class should read The Purpose-Driven Life, The Prayer of Jabez, or some other evangelical Christian cult-classic.
Reality: Most of those books are pop culture Christianity and are used as one-size-fits-all adult Christian education when they really only apply to a small percentage of churches.
What This Means: Find something that actually applies to your community and your church even if it means that you just have a pericope study on Sunday. (The pericope are the lessons for that week.) Those books work for some churches that have that specific hermeneutic but not for most.

There are others, but these cover my current frustrations.

I saw a link to this on From The Anchor Hold and I thought it was very much worth sharing.

(Karen Marie, I don’t know if I’ve told you that I am incredibly happy to have you back online and in one piece. I missed caching your writing while you were sick.)