Sunday School

Of late we have attended a local semi-itenerant 'church' on Sunday mornings. Though thinking themselves anti-traditional, they come from a holiness-pentecostal/charismatic background and the 'services' certainly reflect these traditions. And in general they have a very traditional 'church' mindset about what the body of Christ is supposed to be.

Case in point: they recently decided that it was time that they started having 'Sunday School'.

Now like a lot of things, Sunday School is as Sunday School does, and some does it better than others. Most of my experience with Sunday School has found it rather wanting.

"My, that certainly is a rather broad and sweeping condemnation if you will.." I can hear you thinking in a voice not unlike like J. Vernon McGee.

And yes I suppose it is. In fairness I want to say that for many years in my childhood my own Sunday School teacher was a very Christ-dedicated man named Terry Barns, and that most all of the core doctrine and real Christianity I learned as a child came from this man in Sunday School, who stuck with my age-group for several years and did about as good a job as anyone can do. I can think of no real criticism of his work, except that I do think he taught us the 'Once-saved-always-saved' doctrine, and being raised in a Southern Baptist Church I continued to labor under that error for many years until I really got into the Bible for myself. But mostly this man did a top notch job.

So it may surprise you to read that 'Sunday School', even at its very best, is primarily a failure of the Body of Christ, and as such, actually, a fairly predictable product of the 'church', which steadfastly refuses to embrace the ekklesia truths in the Bible. It's no surprise then that the Sunday School weed which My Father has not planted has gone on to produce increasing weeds like awanas and youth programs and children's church et al.

Sunday School, even at it's dead-level best, is primarily a failure of the Body of Christ.

The Ekklesia of God is so completely different from the 'churches' that it is hard to know where to begin to explain the magnitude of my statement.

The Ekklesia of God was interactive and vibrant and inclusive (of input from the believers I mean, not of sin or sinners). The Ekklesia of God was the assembling together of the believers, not of believers-who-hopefully-invited-their-unbelieving-neighbors-and-strangers-so-that-we-hope-they-might-get saved-at-the-'altar call'. The Ekklesia of God had real, intimate fellowship in Christ as the centerpiece of its coming together, looking at one another at the Table of the Lord, as they broke bread in the Lord's Supper as a full meal every Lord's Day. The Ekklesia of God had a body full of working parts that together built up and encouraged and admonished one another for the love of one another and their Lord.

The 'church' is a weak and pitiful thing, dead and dried up and run over, full of social club members who sit quietly in their pew (or maybe 'church chair'), facing the back of the neck of the person in front of them, thinking about how beautiful their new sanctuary will be, and letting all the edifying, encouraging, and admonishing be handled by an overworked, pretentiously educated, and 'licensed' individual known as 'The Pastor', who, considering the unwieldly load set before him, and the expectation to provide 30 to 45 minutes of entertainment three times a week, quickly devolves into a trite routine of anecdotes, rhythmic speaking, and jokes – trusting in the 'worship leader' to play the right beckoning chords to get enough people down to the 'altar call' to justify the salary that he depends upon his patrons for.

In such an impoverished setting, small wonder that the things that are lacking should be so evident that people should try to set up a 'program' in an attempt to supply their desperate want, like an aged and emphysematic cigarette smoker desperately drawing poison into their lungs to calm the fear they feel from their lack of oxygen, clutching the very instruments of their death ever tighter.

The Body of the Living Christ should react to Sunday School (and all those other programs) like a professional athlete would to someone who wants to put him in an electric wheel chair for the rest of his life.