Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 2, we looked at how we might teach the contents of the Bible in a systematic way by looking at how colleges and universities teach their students. But there are specialized schools that teach the Bible, seminaries.

How do seminaries teach the Bible to their students? When I was attending Southern Evangelical Seminary, we took four classes that covered the entire Bible: two Old Testament classes and two New Testament classes.

These classes moved systematically through each book of the Bible, covering authorship, theological themes, major actors, major events, dating of the events, and literary structure. Now, the books in the Bible, as they are currently arranged, are not all in chronological order, but my seminary professors made sure we understood how all of the books chronologically fit together.

Do any of the Sunday school curricula that are commonly offered in churches use this concept of moving chronologically through the historical narratives of the Bible? None that I’ve ever seen. Instead, what is most often used is a topical curriculum.

A topical curriculum is structured around singular doctrines or applications of the contents of the Bible. For example, there may be a series of lessons on how to apply the Bible’s teachings to the issue of human sexuality. The curriculum will jump around the Bible, picking verses here and there that talk about sexuality.

Or maybe there will be a series on a single doctrine, such as atonement for sins. In this case, the curriculum will, again, jump around the entire Bible, highlighting verses that talk about the atonement.

These topical curricula are not systematic. They are not chronological. They leave the SSG members without a grounding in the overarching historical narrative of the Bible.

Imagine studying the events of World War II. Instead of moving chronologically through the events of WWII, what if the curriculum started with a series of lessons on the bravery of the men who attacked the Axis powers around the world? And then moved to a series on the resistance movements that formed in all the different countries occupied by Japan and Germany. And then moved to a series on how to apply the efficiency of American artillery factories to your own factory or business. And so forth and so forth.

Would each of these lessons be interesting, in and of themselves? Sure. We could learn something from each of these lesson series. But here is the key question: after these lessons, how well would we understand why WWII started in the first place, who the major players were during the war, how events unfolded once the war started, what the major battles were during the war, and how the war was brought to an end?

We might know bits and pieces about the overarching history of WWII, but we certainly would not be experts on WWII. We couldn’t teach others about WWII. We couldn’t explain the reasons WWII happened. We couldn’t explain the major players in the war. We would have a bunch of disjointed facts about the war, and that’s all. In no way would any college, university, or school agree that we had been taught WWII adequately. We would flunk any exam we were given on the facts of WWII.

Now let me be clear. Are topical curricula necessarily bad? No. If your SSG members are well grounded in the historical narrative of the entire Bible, then topical curricula can be wonderful, because now you’re building on a firm foundation of biblical knowledge. But before that foundation is there, the topical curriculum is ineffective.

But this is where we are with SSG members. They know disjointed bits and pieces about the Bible, but most of them (youth and adults) have no idea how it all connects. They don’t know the major components of the overarching biblical narrative. They don’t know the Word of God. We need a reformation because our students are flunking their exams.

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 1, I argued that the primary purpose of Sunday school, or Sunday small groups (SSG’s), is for the group members to learn, in a systematic and thorough manner, the contents of the Bible. If you’re with me so far, then it’s time to explain why I think so many churches are failing to fulfill this purpose.

Curriculum. By curriculum, I mean the lessons that are given to the SSG members each week, 52 weeks a year. The curriculum outlines what the SSG will study over the church year (in the long term) or church quarter (in the short term), it provides teaching aids to the teachers, and it either provides or directs the members to material that should be read ahead of time in preparation for each week’s lesson.

So what is wrong with the majority of curricula that I have taught and used over the last decade as a SSG teacher and leader? There is not a systematic approach to teaching through the contents of the Bible.

How might a curriculum provide this systematic approach? For the answer to this question, we need to look at how schools, colleges, and universities teach any subject. For any subject, be it math, science, or social studies, the curriculum is designed to start with a logical beginning point, build from that beginning week after week so that each lesson builds on the previous, and eventually end when the subject has been covered in its entirety.

If we think about what the Bible is, it consists of 66 separate pieces of literature, with each piece of literature building upon the other. In fact, many of the books of the Bible are historical narratives, which means that they are recounting historical events. Each of these narratives builds upon the narratives that preceded. The historical narratives start in the Book of Genesis and flow all the way through the Book of Revelation.

Yes, the Bible also contains poetry, wisdom literature, and personal letters. But all of these other literary genres hang on the structure of the historical narratives. In other words, without the narratives, the other literature loses much of its meaning and context.

So how is historical narrative studied in high schools, colleges, and universities?

Chronologically. The lessons are arranged in the order in which events occurred. If we are studying World War II, we start with the years leading up to the beginning of the war in the 1930’s, and we end with the treaties that were signed to officially end the war in 1945. For the Bible, you would start with Genesis, as those events occurred first, and you would end with Revelation because those events will occur last.

In part 3, we will continue to look at SSG curricula.

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

After teaching both adult and youth Sunday school classes for over a decade, I have determined that we need a Sunday school reformation. If the primary purpose of Sunday morning small groups (SSG’s) is to educate church members on the contents of the Bible, the Word of God, then we are failing badly. This is not just a criticism of my own church, because we are just one of thousands of churches all around the world that are not fulfilling the purpose of SSG’s.

Let me stop here, because some of you are already disagreeing with me. You deny that the primary purpose of SSG’s is to learn the contents of the Word of God. You believe that the primary purpose is evangelism, or building community, or even prayer. While I agree that these are important secondary purposes of SSG’s, they cannot be the primary purposes. Why?

There is no point in evangelism if we don’t know what we are supposed to evangelize. The contents of our evangelism comes from the Bible. It makes no sense to carry a message to the lost when we aren’t too clear on what that message is. We can only get clear through studying the Bible.

What about building community? A community is only as strong as what it is based upon. A church community must be built on the doctrines and teachings of that church. The doctrines and teachings of a Christian church come, first and foremost, from the Bible. Therefore, there can be no meaningful church community if the community doesn’t know what the Bible teaches. The liberal Christian churches have tried to build community on anything but the Bible, and their numbers have been in precipitous decline.

What about prayer? Well, prayer is pretty ineffective if we don’t know who we are praying to. God is known, most fully, through His Word. If we don’t know his Word, then our knowledge of the one to whom we pray is shallow. Shouldn’t we know a lot about the person to whom we direct all of our prayers? Prayer is also ineffective if we don’t know what God wants us to pray about. The Bible tells us exactly what God wants from our prayer life, so our knowledge of the Bible reflects directly on our prayers.

So here is where we are so far. Although community, evangelism, prayer, and possibly other things are important for SSG’s, those secondary purposes can never be successful without first taking care of the number one purpose for SSG’s: learning the contents of the Word of God, the Bible.

This point is worth repeating. If your goal through your SSG’s is to build community among your church members, you will fail unless you make sure that your members are learning the Bible in a systematic and thorough manner. There are no shortcuts. There is no way to get around this fact. The strongest communities are built around common language, common stories, common knowledge.

In part 2, I will talk about why we are failing to teach our church members the contents of the Bible in a systematic and thorough manner.