How Sunday School Made Us Biblical Dummies The Clockwork Pastor

How Sunday School Made Us Biblical Dummies - The Clockwork Pastor

Super Simple Sunday School

I'm starting a new Sunday School class at First Christian that's called Super Simple Sunday School.  It's basically morning devotions/morning prayer.  The class goes a bit like this:

• We read one of that Sunday's lectionary text.
• We have a brief discussion of the text.
• We share prayer concerns.
• We pray.
• We leave.

That's it.  The whole point of the class is for folks who might want a bit of quiet time during the week or those who for whatever reason, don't want to get into the big time Adult Sunday School class.  We aren't discussing major bits of theology, but just coming for some quiet time with each other and God. 

The first event was great.  One person showed up, but it was a holy time nonetheless and that made me feel glad.

So, if you are in the area, please join me Sundays at 9:15am for a time of devotion with a good cup of coffee.

Where Dennis Tries to Write A Bible Study

For the last few months, I've been leading a Bible Study at church where we did an overview of the Gospels.  I used some material from the Thoughtful Christian and I think the study went over well.  In looking for what to do next, I stumbled upon a curriculum called Joining the Story on Discipleshare, an open-source Christian Education resource that contains materials written by Disciples of Christ pastors and lay leaders.  Joining the Story was written by Lee Yates, a Disciples pastor in Kentucky. It's written to provide some Bible literacy to youth.  While I'm all for that, I wanted to make it accessible to adults, so I got this fool idea to adapt Joining the Story to adults.

Now, you have to understand a few things.  I have this love/hate relationship with Christian Education.  I'm fascinated by it and want to learn more, but I don't consider myself a teacher and feel like a poor Biblical scholar at best.  That's always made me hesitant to teach, even though people think I do a good job. 

So, I decided to try to adapt this study.  Some of it includes Lee's words (I did ask for permission).  I don't know if I will do a good job, but if you want to see what I'm doing, I've set up a blog where I am writing the curriculum (I'm taking a page from Landon Whitsitt's idea of writing a book online). Take a look a please feel free to let me know what I should add (or detract). 

I look forward to you all joining me on this odd journey.  God help me.  Really.  I mean, what the hell am I getting myself into?

Tempted to Torture

Lutheran pastor and blogger Mark Daniels expresses his outrage at a recent Pew Forum Survey that showed that a majority of churchgoers tend to support torture. In trying to understand why so many Christians would be willing to accept such a barborous act, he look to the Pharisees:

While there are more than a few preachers whose "theology" contains jingoistic nationalism and spiritual arrogance, many churchgoers, I'll bet, adopt such ideas, including the acceptance of torture, in spite of what they're being told at their local church...

...The inescapable conclusion is that many churchgoers aren't especially engaged in their faith. They're like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, people with whom Jesus often tangled. The Pharisees were, in many ways, laudable people. They were regular in worship, scrupulous about keeping religious law.

But Jesus called them whitewashed tombs. In spite of the insistence of the Old Testament that God loved his people as a matter of divine choice (grace) that should evoke faith, they turned faith into a legal transaction. God was whittled down to the size of the local peddler. "If I perform these religious duties, God must accept me," was the implicit notion of the Pharisees. When a person starts to think that they can deal on an equal footing with God, humility goes. So does a sense of humanity.

We have modern day Pharisees in our churches. They sing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me/I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see." But for too many, those have become mere words and what they really believe is, "How good I am and how clever of me to be moral, upstanding churchperson and how right I am to condemn others and make them tow the line." The actual teaching and preaching they hear is just background noise.

The existence of boastful Phaisaism in the modern US church must be one of the poisonous springs from which "Christian" acceptance of torture emanates.

I have to say that while I was just as shocked as Daniels about the casual acceptance of torture in our nation's churches, I found his answer wanting if not a tad bit condescending.

I think there are many people in our pews that do think torture is okay. But I also think that this tends to sadly reflect our culture. I would bet that a lot of Americans would think back to 9/11 and think that that it's okay since they hurt us first.

I remember having an email conversation a few years ago with a person who also happened to be Lutheran. When we got to the issue of torture, he basically said that it was okay since they hurt us in 2001.

It would be easy for me or others to simply say that they people are "whitewashed tombs" to condemn them for having such thoughts and to tell them to get right. But there is something within me that doesn't think that's the right approach.

Part of the problem here is that most Americans, even most who go to church tend to believe in a theology that says if you are good, you go to heaven, and if you are bad, you get punished. It's a natural theology that I think is part of the culture. So if you look at this in regards to torture, then people are thinking that these people are getting their just desserts. For many, September 11 is still a very real issue one that they can feel at a visceral level.

The other thing is that more often than not, the issues like war or torture tend to be "shouting" issues, things that are preached but not necessairly reasoned with. Read any blog these days and you get more people yelling at each other and clothing themselves with righteousness than in trying to handle some hard questions.

Part of the task of Christianity is to foster the countercultural values of Jesus. I think part of that task is to reason why torture is wrong. But it even has to be more than that. It has to be done in the context of 9/11 not as some hypothetical issue. Many of us who oppose the use of torture tend to act as if September 11 never happened. It becomes an abstract exercise. The average joe in the pews IS thinking about 9/11 and hence, his support for torture. We have to explain, with the memories of that dreadful day in September in the back of our minds, that it is still wrong. As religious leaders, we have to be able to feel the anger and still say with every moral fiber that it is still wrong and here is why. We have to be willing to feel the temptation to hurt our enemy and yet rebuke Satan the same way Christ did in the desert.

Maybe it seems silly to have to teach people that torture is wrong, but that's the world we live in. It's the way of the world. In the Beatitudes, Jesus begins every sentence with "You have heard it said." That's the way things have been and will always be. All of us are swayed by that reasoning. To get to "but I say to you" means having to be taught. Daily. Again and again.

It is dissapointing to see that many American Christians support torture, but that only means that I need to try harder. It is not a time for condemning, but a time to gird our loins and keep teaching.

Worship: Adults Only?

I will admit that youth ministry is not my strongsuit, but something that has always bothered me is churches that have Sunday School during worship service. I don't get that.

I was chatting with some other church professionals and guy who works with youth at a local church was upset that Sunday School took place during worship. He commented that the youth are in classes from babies to high school. He then said it was no wonder that the youth don't go to church after high school since they were never included in the first place.

I don't know what possesses people to think that placing kids in Sunday School, while the grown-up worship is a good idea. Since when did worship become "Adults-Only?" We might as well put up beaded doors like the ones we see at those Adult bookstores.

The thing is, worship should be for everyone. Kids should be able to participate in worship. I know, sometimes kids talk in worship or they look bored, but I'm beginning to think they are aware of what's going on. If we exclude them from worship, the message they recieve is that this isn't something that's worth doing.

I know that adults are probably not doing this out of some ill will. It's probably a tradition going way back. But just because it was done in 1958 means it has to be done in 2008.

If I ever am asked to lead a church with such a setup, that is one sacred cow that's going to become a juicy hamburger.

Why Christian Educations (Kinda) Sucks

My friend Tim (aka Feral Pastor) recently shared with me something he had once heard concerning youth and Christian Education. He said that "Jesus played with the children and taught the adults. We tend to do the opposite."

How true. Look at any opening for a Christian Ed director or pastor and what we find is basically someone that works mostly with youth. Churches tend to have strong Sunday School programs that stress the basic Christian story. But as kids get older and into adulthood, Christian Ed becomes nonexistent or become "adult forums" where they talk about the latest public policy concern but not studying the Bible.

I sometimes wonder if the reason mainline churches are languishing is because we make kids sit down and learn, instead of playing with them. I also wonder if it's because people who want a more hefty, deep-thinking Christianity come to church and find nothing that feeds their mind and soul.

If I were to design a position in a church for me centered on Christian Ed, I would design a program for the whole church, not just the kiddies. I would try to create a "lay seminary" where people could actually try to understand their faith. Yes, I would still have some adult forums, but I would also have classes where people would really grapple with Scripture and come to understand the story of God working in the world.

Is there a church out there (in the Twin Cities) willing to take me on?