Back to Sunday School

I've always loved the fall- the leaves, the cooler weather, the new school year ahead.
The same is true for fall in Sunday school. This week was exciting. I saw new families who have just moved to the area, and old families who had taken a break from church over the summer.
It's just like starting school, new, fresh, exciting!
But in our little church in Burlington we have space issues, too little space for too many kids. I will never turn a child away, but this has created an issue for our congregation. I have about 90 kids from birth to 6th grade, but really only two spaces to house them over three services. Our church also doubles as a coffee shop, so we have a great lounge area where people sit and chat between and during services.
So, here's the problem: we want to have an effective program, but we need more space, specifically for our upper elementary boys small group. I've tried to crunch more kids in other rooms, we've met outside, we've asked for families to come to different services, but nothing has worked. So, I've made an executive decision and we've taken over the coffee shop.
I'm not so sure that the adults like that very much. We even have our building manager hushing them up and telling them to go outside. It's causing quite a stir! But the kids love it, comfortable chairs, the sweet smell of coffee and cookies wafting around them, and my husband, who runs the small group (he's a softy at heart), often fetches hot chocolate on their demand.
The added stress is worth it to me because I know the kids need to come first, but it does add an unusual element to the Sunday experience.
I plan on moving a lower elementary boys group down to the coffee shop this week to work on building race cars with their leader Matt. It'll be a mess, but it will be worth it! I'll let you know how that works out.

The Bottom of the Totem Pole

I had a discouraging day this week. Two incidents reminded me of the cultural status of kids.
The first happened at church- to my dismay. We serve lunch in our third service, and this week it was pizza. We asked the servers of the food if we could take some pizza to our kids upstairs- we had eight hungry students in our elementary class. (Normally I wouldn't ask. I bring healthy snacks of fruit and vegetables, cheeses, yogurts, and crackers for them, but this was a fun day; everyone loves pizza!)
The servers scowled at my request and curtly informed me that we could have the leftovers- if there were any. Because of my rebellious nature, I sent the kids down with one of my helpers to get into the adult line. It's a good thing too, 'cuz there were no leftovers. This was most disturbing to the food servers who stared and glared and reluctantly handed over the food, but my kids happily munched on pizza without knowing how they had been relegated to the bottom of the societal totem pole. (Note to church: this is the wrong approach to kids.)
The next incident happened when my neighbor walked onto my property to snoop around my barn. We've been fixing the walls and residing it to make an outdoor play space for my three children. (I thought she had noticed that it rains a lot here in the Washington foothills and playing outside is almost impossible for close to six months out the year.) Instead she was obviously upset that we had taken the eyesore from dingy to beautiful, complete with a cement floor, but no heating or plumbing or anything fancy. "I don't want a lot of noisy kids running around," she announced to my dismay as my three year old walked by chattering to our fuzzy cat. I had to be very careful to not get defensive on my children's behalf and simply noted the dark clouds and gloom of the winter as our main incentive for the space.
It has bothered me all week that kids are the lowest priority in our society. I know some of you will argue that this is simply not true- look at the immense spending on public education, health care, and the like, but let's be realistic: kids are not a embraced as important, knowledgeable, and worthwhile to our society as a whole. How many times have you gotten "the glare" in restaurants regarding your kids? When was the last time that you found your children embraced in the grocery store? How many adults in your life choose to be around you because of your kids? For the church, how much of the budget is spent on kids ministry? How many times do the adult population and the kid population intermingle in activities? How is your volunteering going? How many patrons without children work in your program? When are children mentioned from the pulpit?
I think if change is going to happen, it has to start in the church. It's not right for any member of the congregation (regardless of age) to be frowned upon. All servants of the church need to treat all members with respect. I can give my neighbor a pass, she probably has her reasons for her disdain, but I have an issue with the workers at church. There is no excuse there.

Starting a new series

One of my teachers has asked me create a curriculum series on the Fruits of the Spirit. I'm beginning that project today. I must admit, it is going to be a challenge for me to work outside of the box I've constructed with our curriculum. Until now, I've always focused on the 12 essential topics of Christianity: Jesus, Faith, Creation, Love One Another, Tell Others About Jesus, Salvation, Sin and Forgiveness, Prayer, The Bible, Church, Christmas and Easter (not necessarily in that order.) I chose this route long ago because I felt that churches were not providing the basic Christian information that kids needed before entering adolescence. Yet I also feel that sometimes you just have to teach what you are led to teach, and if my instructor feels led to teach the fruits of the spirit, then we'll do that.
This brings me to that point about passion in teaching that I wrote about a while back. I do think that you should trust your own instincts regarding approaches to teaching Sunday school. Try something new, mix up your schedule one Sunday just to see how it fits, try not to get stuck in a rut. I could convince anyone that I'm stuck in a bit if a rut with my twelve topics, after all, it has been my primary focus for so long that I've become a bit bored, and that's an honest feeling. I think trying a new unit of fruits, complete with the tasty objects as a hands on experience, will be good for me, even healthy!

My Dream

A few times a year I speak at conferences to groups of Sunday school teachers. It is always a wonderful experience, invigorating, and enlightening. I find that regardless of the topic, we always gravitate to great ideas that are working in our classes, and of course struggles that we deal with week after week. So, here is my dream. I want to have this dialogue regularly. We are all on the same team after all- we all have the same goals. So...my dream is to do away with the competition that churches seem to be trapped in, and start working together. I'd like us all to come to one spot- it doesn't matter where, blogging or at a huge conference, or in Hawaii on a beach (that would be fun!) but let's start talking about what works.
I guess that was an additional reason why we decided to give our curriculum away for free (go get it at www.kidsfaith.org!) I do not believe that there is any one right curriculum, although you've already heard my issues with the big publishing companies, but I do think that between all of us, we could get some outstanding ideas on how to teach Biblical principals. So, send me your ideas- modify our curriculum- instead of teaching the trinity with year braiding the three colors together, teach it using a candle! Tell me what works in your classroom and I'll put it up- I don't want anything, but a great dialogue of great ideas. My husband believes that those should be on a blog of their own- I'm going to think about that for a couple of days- maybe that is next week's project.

Free Means Free

Recently I've been asked why we have switched to a free downloadable site, www.kidsfaith.org, for our curriculum. The answer is because we feel everyone should have access, and the more people that can use the curriculum, the more kids can be reached for God. Ultimately this is not our work anyway, it's God's. Afterall, he wrote all the concepts and stories that we use. He laid down the foundational knowledge, we are simply repackaging it for young minds to digest.
We began writing curriculum almost five years ago when we moved to the Skagit Valley. I volunteered to be Children's Director at a brand new church in Burlington, Washington, and I began immediately looking for age appropriate preschool Sunday School programs for our very tiny class. I couldn't find what I liked. Most were a hodgepodge of story programs that taught obedience, which has always irritated me. Also, they were expensive. Big publishing companies have really cornered the market on curriculum and make a hefty profit. It bothered me to take tithes and throw them at a companies that were in states far away.
Also, I really wanted to focus on the basics of Christianity- teach kids about Salvation, Creation, Faith, Loving Others, etc. I truly believe that the church doesn't do this very well, as research shows that kids in middle school don't know much about their religion, although they know who Noah, David, Daniel, and the big boys of the Bible are.
Finally, I wanted a program that was simple enough for our mobile church to implement. I didn't have a set classroom where I could put up bulletin boards or paint murals. All I had was a couple of tubs of toys and supplies and an uncomfortable teacher's lounge.
So, I began with one month: Love One Another. I wrote the first story, the Good Samaritan, and wrote up a class schedule similar to the ones I had followed as a preschool teacher. We would gather in a circle, sing a song, say a verse, pray, read a story, and do an activity.
The next week I wrote another story, but we sang the same songs and said the same verse. By week three the kids, with yet another story on the same topic, were able to tell me about what they were learning. By the end of the month, they knew the verse and could independently tell me what Loving Others was all about. Intrinsically I knew that the curriculum would work.
At the end of that first month it occurred to me that parents might like the same stories I read to their children to have at home, to read again, after all, how many times do you read a favorite book to a small child? I have The Spooky Old Tree memorized because my 7 and 9 year olds needed to hear it multiple times a day for two years!
So I found an artist and bought some pens. I began to put pictures to the stories, and my husband scanned them into the computer. We copied them off, stapled them, and gave them to our parents. The parents seemed to like them, then we started hearing that they were being used in a sister church in the next city.
From there the curriculum blossomed. After I finished the preschool program, my husband created a website and started to distribute it for free. That got very expensive very fast. So we spent a few years advertising and distributing it at cost via the Internet. It was wonderful to get feedback from churches on how well their kids were learning. Meanwhile, I had moved on to the elementary program, created prayer journals, and a home school workbook. I got half way through the second year of the elementary program when I began a Children's church for my Sunday program. That launched the CC program, at the same time I was plugging away at an upper elementary program.
Today we have, for free, a preschool program, early elementary, half of the upper elementary, and most of the Children's Church program. In addition, supplemental materials for all the topics, a teen novel, a family small group study and a home school workbook that all teach the basics of Christianity.
Every day I continue to work on the curriculum. It will probably be something I do forever as it has become like an old friend. We may never be as big and grandiose as the publishing companies, we may never have fame or recognition, but that doesn't matter to us, because someday I will may meet those in heaven that I was honored to affect here on earth.

It's About Love

I'm reminded again today how important love is in Sunday school.
My Sunday experience is very busy. As each child arrives I make a connection with them, some I high five, some I hug, some I simply tell them how beautiful they are or notice their smile. Every child, every service, every week gets noticed by me. My teachers also make a concerted effort to notice every child in their care, but ultimately they may be too busy and I consider this my responsibility first and foremost.
Some of the adults in the building don't understand this mentality. They give me quizzical looks when I break away from a conversation to acknowledge a child, they are irritated when I will stop listening to them to listen to someone under ten, but I persist.
I also move through my classrooms during services to make connections with kids, tell them how smart they are, or ask them questions about their lives. At first my teachers were confused by my apparent lack of interest in them, but now they leave me to my job of connecting with kids and carry on with their own work.
When service is over and everyone is leaving, I give hugs, high fives, and tell kids that I will miss them. I also tell them that I love them. It is interesting to see the change in my students since I started telling them that I love them. Many more are running into my arms now when they see me. They are smiling shyly and saying, "I love you too," before they exit. But most importantly, they are coming back, to hear about God and his love for them. Without a connection to these kids, and without them knowing that they are entering a safe haven where they are cherished and loved, they may not want to come back. Above all, we are to love others, as God loves them, this is the next greatest commandment.

A Good Day

It’s always amazing to me how much a class can change in just a week. Last Sunday I had a challenging group of boys who tested my classroom management skills. This week, quite the opposite class arrived. Since we have three services, our families often move fluidly from one to another per their needs each week. So this week I had a delightful class of older elementary kids who easily understood the message of Salvation. Instead of reviewing the concept that God wants a relationship with you, this group could explain that to me already, I quickly moved on to the concept that Salvation is a gift from God (you cannot earn it.) My star teacher had already wrapped a gift as a demonstration tool and had left it with me to use, but this group saw it and explained it to me upon entering the room. So, I had to devise plan B immediately.
I found the crayons and gave each of them a blank piece of paper. I had them draw a box, then put their favorite thing inside the box. Pictures of kittens, family members, and Nintendo DS game units appeared on their pages. Meanwhile I was drawing a box with little circles inside (one for each child in the class.) I put faces and hair on my little circles while each child explained why they chose their favorite thing.
Then I showed them my box with the little faces inside. They smiled when they realized that I had drawn each of them. A few blushed. Then I explained that this was not my box, but God’s box. “What does that mean?” I asked them.
“That we are God’s favorite thing!” they said smiling.
“That’s right!” Then I drew a bow on top of the box and explained that God gave each of them a gift, the gift of Salvation. You cannot earn salvation, God gives it because he loves us and it is given through Jesus Christ.
They got it, and it was a fun moment!