Sunday School Canceled: Some Churches Put Parents In Charge

By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

(RNS) Don't look for children's Sunday school classes at Ridgewood Church in Port Arthur, Texas. And forget about scavenger hunts and water park trips: the youth ministry is no more.

Sound like a dying church?

No, it's a family-integrated congregation, whose leaders wanted parents -- rather than Sunday school teachers and youth ministers -- to spiritually train their children. Driven by statistics about youth leaving church after high school, they've turned to the Bible as their sole educational text and shunned age-segregated structures.

"Nobody disagrees that there's a problem," said Ridgewood's Pastor Dustin Guidry, whose church started the transition seven years ago. "What do we do about it? It's just going back to the basics, relying upon the sufficiency of Scriptures."

Guidry later learned other congregations were doing the same thing -- shuttering classrooms, demanding parents -- especially fathers -- take on more of a spiritual leadership role and sometimes canceling Sunday schools.

In "Divided," a controversial video circulating online and a related book called "A Weed in the Church," the movement's leaders warn that "unbiblical" age-segregated activities can lead youth away from the church.

Pastor Scott Brown, director of the North Carolina-based National Center for Family-Integrated Churches and author of the book, said many of its close to 800 affiliated churches have either stopped or reduced traditional Sunday school classes.

"When Jesus gathers people together, he gathers the generations," said Brown. "He doesn't segregate people by age. He's famous for saying 'suffer the little children to come unto me' because his disciples wanted to banish the children. Jesus wasn't that way."

Pastor Paul Thompson of Eastside Southern Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, was influenced by Brown's book when he presented a resolution to his church in April calling it to "repent and cease" its past age segregation, acknowledging that "few in our city, state, region, or nation may understand."

Brown and Thompson say the disappearance of youths from their pews was a catalyst for change.

"Probably the hard, hard questions were 'Where are the students and the children who have grown up in this church?" Thompson said. "A lot of them live still here in Twin Falls, and they don't go to church at all and they don't live what we taught them when they were children."

Pastor Josue Raimundo of Iglesia Biblica de la Gracia (Grace Bible Church) of Arlington, Va., agrees with the principle that Brown's
movement espouses but thinks churches can apply it differently. There's still Sunday school at his church but youth and parents sit around a big table together, taking turns reading and discussing the Bible.

"The issue is for the parents to have the charge of instructing their children," he said.

The family-centered movement is part of a broader trend of churches struggling to respond to statistics that claim a youth attrition rate of 40-88 percent. Christian Smith, director of the National Study of Youth and Religion, said there is cause for concern but those statistics are sometimes wildly exaggerated.

Smith has found that 14 percent of youth ages 13-17 identified as "not religious." That number nearly doubles five years later. And he notes that those numbers could change as these young adults marry and have children.

Yet he doesn't consider Brown and others' age-integrated approach extreme. While it's not the "silver bullet," it fits his findings about the key role parents play in influencing children's lives.

"Parents are so crucial that if you just split them up from their kids and the parents think that some ministry professional is taking care of it, that's not going to be very effective," he said.

A range of ministries are responding to the research with books, lessons and conferences.

The third conference of D6, a movement that explores how churches can encourage parents to spiritually train their youth, will meet Sept. 21-23 in Dallas, expecting more than 2,000 people from about 700 churches. It's named for the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, which is also cited by the family-centered movement for its admonition to teach children God's commandments.

"I do believe there is an overbalance of age-segregated programming and that overbalance must be corrected," said Richard Ross, a D6 presenter and professor of student ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. "But it is throwing out the baby with the bath to suggest that those groupings should never happen."

Daryl Nuss, chief ministries officer of the National Network of Youth Ministries, also thinks the family-centered movement is too
strict.

"That may work in a small segment of churches but what about all those students who do not come from a healthy family, do not come from a nuclear family?" he asked.

Comments

[Nigel Goodnow]

01:10 PM on 09/21/2011

Hopefully this church is not pitching all its children and youth programs in response to a single well-produced video in hopes of returning to a mythic pre-Sunday school past, though this is what the article seems to imply. I've seen "Divided" and was impressed by its production quality and its diagnosis, but a little alarmed by its analysis of the problem and recommended solution. No historic Christian creed includes belief in an young earth or opposition to developmentally appropriate teaching, and churches which think they are getting back to Christian roots by following the recommendations of this video are no closer than before. Is there too little discipleship in families? Too much entertainment in youth groups with a super-relevant hipster Bible study tacked on the end? Are adult believers often too shallow in their faith to even know where to begin with their kids? Sure, but I'm doubtful that steering the church out of one ditch only to fall into the other is much of an improvement. Not everyone who believes that children learn differently from adults is an evolutionist and Thomas Dewey disciple. Are the Scripture sufficient for salvation? Yes, but that doesn't imply that they have the final word on pedagogy.

[DianaLynn1967]

08:57 AM on 09/21/2011

What I remember about Sunday School is that it was boring. Regular church was always more fun for me. I loved youth group and choir though.

I think a big part of the problem is the adult tendency to underestimate the intellect of children and dumb down the curriculum. Children are much smarter than we give them credit for being.

[Toutlaguerre]

07:22 PM on 09/19/2011

Long ago in the year 1473 BCE Moses the writer of Deuteronomy 6:4-8 recorded those words under divine inspiration to show that parents are the ones responsible for the spirituality of their children. The Israelites were commanded to first love their God with all their heart soul and vital force and then inculcate the commandments into the hearts of children. I am glad for the insight into the matter this article provided. I respect and admire those who take charge of their responsibility to train their children spiritually. Children are an inheritance from God and this should not be taken lightly. The scriptures also shows that children were to congregate with their parents and not be taught separately in a Sunday school or sabbath school. That way they could observe their parents behaviour and know what is expected of them and be taught the same things adults are taught. Why did it have to take people this long to realise this when the bible said it eons ago?

[gracealone]

04:27 AM on 09/17/2011

Having parents responsible for the spiritual upbrining of their children is a good thing. It is not the chruches job...it is the fathers. I agree that there needs to be things available for the broken families....all too often fathers are missing from the picture or are simply inept at leading their family.

[StevenM]

03:35 PM on 09/17/2011

Re: "It is not the church’s job...it is the fathers."

That is sexist hooey! While some men are natural nurturers, some women are natural spiritual leaders.

[gracealone]

06:07 PM on 09/17/2011

Wow you're really showing the love tonight....balderdash....poppycock....now sexist "hooey". Maybe you need to cut back on the caffeine. We’ve spoken about this….you know what scripture I am referring to. While of course you might be right that in some cases a woman is a better spiritual leader than a man, it does not take away the fact that a child needs both a father and a mother. I believe that it is the man’s job to lead his family spiritually….indeed many don’t. But some men’s ineptitude to fulfill their role as spiritual leader does not mean that a child doesn’t need their father to lead them. Indeed most women I know wish their husbands would take more of an active role in leading their children spiritually....

If that’s sexist….please feel free to continue to use silly expletives and attack character with labels. Gotta wonder why you are now attacking character. Indeed in the past you avoided many important questions but at least you were still civil about things. Guess it must have been something I said….sorry if I offended.

[trekie70]

05:24 PM on 09/16/2011

Age-segregated SS serves a purpose-why put the preschoolers in with HS seniors? There is nothing wrong with youth trips, I took plenty of them myself and turned out fine. The reason graduates don't return to church is that once they get to college or out on their own, they are able to see the blatant hypocrisy present in most congregations. Want to keep people coming back as they become adults? Get rid of the hypocrisy.

[gracealone]

04:20 AM on 09/17/2011

IMO the best way to get rid of hypocrisy is to have the parents taking the responsibility for the spiritual upbringing of their children. The child sees their parents everyday. A Christian parent should be teaching their child the Word of God in both words and in living out their lives. I agree that there can be a purpose of age segregation but unfortunately for many parents they just rely on the church and school to teach their child everything. Hypocrisy will disappear pretty quickly if the parents have to live up to what they are teaching.

[jmoser1973]

08:05 AM on 09/18/2011

that sounds great except that many parent now a days can't be bothered. Most kids learn everything from the internet and tv. Many parents don't take the time to check kids homework let alone teach spirituality. So even though it i a great plan to have the parents do it(not just the fathers), unfortunately it isn't going to happen.

[Pale Writer]

03:46 AM on 09/19/2011

Amen to that. Which is why we opted to use our college education to home-school our kids and train them ourselves. We decided if we are going to train them spiritually, we might as well train them academically as well. Hypocricy is a dirty word in our home. We never ask our kids to do anything we aren't already doing ourselves. It's a great motivator...because kids have a way of detecting all of your faults in grand detail...

[rsttho557949]

02:13 PM on 09/16/2011

I think that isca good idea to get parents involved. Probably why the church is dying can be closely linked to the apathy of the father in the home of believers. The same interest and excitement that a father shows for a pro football game should be shown towards God if one is a believer. I mean why do kids grow up with such passion for sports like baseball, football, hockey and basketball? Most of the time they have embraced the behavior patterns of that father towards those sports. If a father is hot for God by teaching Sunday School or being involved in the church, it's a good bet the children will follow his lead. Fathers who are believers need to be more involved; they will bring life backnto their churches.

[JeffWayne]

10:57 AM on 09/16/2011

Getting parents involved with the education of there children seems like a good thing to me.

But then again, a 40-88% attrition rate from the church seems like a good thing to me as well.

[gracealone]

04:25 AM on 09/17/2011

As a Christian looking at the state of many of churches can't say I disagree with either of your statements. Many of the churches have lost their way and are simply teaching Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Of course the kids fall away because they can see what is taught is more often of the world than it is of God.