The Origins Of Sunday School And The Call To Compassionate Innovation

Have you ever wondered how the great Christian tradition of Sunday School got started? It was in England during the late 1700’s, just as the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Large groups of poor people had moved into the cities to work in the new factories. Children as young as eight were hired for brutal six-day work schedules. On Sundays, which was the only off day, the children blew off steam by smashing windows, breaking into homes, and pickpocketing the city’s residents.

Eventually, an Anglican layperson named Robert Raikes decided that the plight of these children was something Christian folk should be concerned about. He started a school on Sunday to teach them reading and writing, the Bible, and proper morals – the only way these poor children would receive any sort of education. The “Sunday School” was born. Raikes, who was also a printer, published large sheets with the Ten Commandments and other Scriptures verses on them – the first-ever Sunday School curriculum.

Over the next few decades, the idea spread across England and to the United States, eventually being offered for all people – not just the poor street children. It wasn’t long before Sunday School become an essential part of the culture and the church’s witness to the world.

What Raikes accomplished with his first Sunday School was nothing extraordinary. His program didn’t require a huge investment or some sort of miraculous intervention like the Parting of the Red Sea. It simply took a basic concern for needy children, the willingness to try something new, and the perseverance to stick with it and make it work.

As we begin a new year of Christian Education around the nation, I hope we can continue to teach the children and adults of our time with that same compassionate vision. I have always said that there is no more important task for the church than educating the people in the faith.

I also hope that we can be open to new ways to spread God’s Word that respond to the changing conditions in our world. We are not facing the same problems that Raikes faced with the new factories and the children in the street – but we certainly have our own challenges and our own calling that is unique to our context. May we be faithful witnesses to God’s love in our time with the same sense of compassion and love.

From the Pulpit: The Other Side Of The Boat

(This excerpt is from the sermon I preached at Clarksville Presbyterian Church on August 21, 2011. It is based on John 21: 1-14)

It is a good thing to have some self-awareness about the traditions we keep and why we keep them, and to be willing to update some of them when it is necessary. That is the lesson that we learn from today’s story from the 21st chapter of John.

All night long, the disciples have been out on the lake, and they’ve brought in absolutely no fish. Their nets are completely empty haul after haul. But then, just as the sun is beginning to come up, they see Jesus standing there on the shore. Being unusually honest for fisherman, they admit to him that they’ve caught absolutely no fish. Jesus tells them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. And as soon as the disciples move their nets, they began to catch more fish than they can haul into the boat.

Now as I’ve already suggested, I don’t know much about fishing - especially about fishing with nets from a boat. But obviously, something had happened in that lake that night. Something changed. Whether it was the wind, the temperature, or the water currents – conditions were different than what they were used to, and the fish weren’t where they had always been. The techniques that had worked in the past were no longer working. The solution was not to completely change what they were doing. They were still going to be fishing in the lake with nets from a boat. But they did need to makes some adaptation, some updating of their technique, to continue catching fish.

In the same way, we as the church are in a time of changing conditions. And because of this, we are struggling to balance tradition with the call for new practices. And it's hard for us, because we are a body of believers that is steeped in tradition, some going back as far as 2000 years or even longer.

What has made the church so strong and so resilient throughout its history is its ability to resist every trend and fad that comes along in culture, and to instead stay true to our beliefs and our core practices. As a result, even as the world is rapidly changing around us, and even as other institutions rise and fall, we can always count on the church being here as an authentic and consistent witness to the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ.

So our calling is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and abandon everything that has made the church great. But in these changing times, we are being called to update some of our techniques. If we want to give the most effective witness we can in today’s world, we can’t be completely tied to “the way that we’ve always done things.” We must be willing to fish from the other side of the boat, because like or not, the fish that we are meant to catch are not where they used to be...

... In our particulr time and place, when Jesus calls on us to fish from the other side of the boat, he is calling us most urgently to update the way we do evangelism and outreach. Those are the areas where, despite a lot of hard work and a lot of good efforts, we are pulling up empty nets. It’s not that our church and other churches in the community have not already been doing good outreach ministry. We have many very dedicated people who put in a lot of hours at places like the food pantry, Project Care For, the Ruritan’s thrift store, Madeline’s House, and other places that have helped a lot of people. It’s not that these ministries have failed. Not in any way.

But the reality is that these efforts are no longer enough. I don’t have to quote a bunch of statistics for us to realize how tough the economy is – and we are now entering the fourth year since the bottom fell out. Many people who used to have good jobs are facing the unimaginable strain of long-term unemployment, and many others are learning to scrape by on a fraction of what they used to earn.

In Mecklenburg County, these increasing economic needs seem to be especially urgent, and the structures we have in place to help people are being strained to the breaking point. Here in Clarksville, Project Care For has been shut down since June for lack of funds – which is not the first time this has happened - and the food pantry has burned through all of its reserve supplies.

The fish have moved, and our traditional nets of outreach ministry are no longer adequate. As a church and as a community, we are being called to cast our nets on the other side of the boat. We are being called to dig deep not just into our financial resources, but into all of our talents and skills and energies, to come up with new and more effective ways to help those who are struggling in these difficult times.

This summer, I have been in conversation with the other three pastors in our downtown area about ways that our community can better meet these needs – and our own Mission Committee has discussed this as well. We all agree that it’s going to take a different approach than just handouts of food or money. What people need the most are things like jobs, education, childcare, and transportation – things that are not as simple as paying an electric bill, but that in the long run provide a much greater benefit.

Over the course of the coming months, my hope is that these conversations can continue and that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, something can begin to come together - some type of new ministry. I can’t say what this new ministry should look like. It’s going to require a vision that is much broader than one pastor or one church. But I can say that it will require us to cast our nets on the other side of the boat, to do more than “what we’ve always done.”

Top 10: Let Them Eat Cake

When told that the people had no bread, Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake." A few days ago on Facebook, I asked my friends to share contemporary examples of the same type of ignorance and lack of compassion. Here are the top 10 responses:

10) Let them use the emergency room.

9) Poor people have no work ethic.

8) They'll just use that money for alcohol and drugs.

7) Poor people have it good these days. Most of them have cell phones and
televisions.

6) Poor people in America would be considered wealthy in some countries.

5) Give a man a fish...

4) Jesus said that the poor will always be with us.

3) It's the job of churches, not the government, to help the poor.

2) When the Bible talks about the poor, it means spiritual poverty.

1) Whatever you do, don't raise my taxes.

In future posts, I'll unpack each of these statements and show why they are misguided or outright false.

Do you have any to add to the list?