Why Sunday School is Important

04/27/08

There are certain verses that I think you could spend an entire lifetime on. A For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son@ ; A Be imitators of God@ ; A Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and your neighbor like yourself@ ; A Trust in the Lord with all your heart@ . These are powerhouse verses that when we really dig deep into all they mean, it= s about enough to make your head explode. I want us to look at a couple of these verses today. One we could spend a lifetime dissecting. Proverbs 22:6 (page 464 in your pew Bibles). A Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.@ I want to look at this verse as how it pertains to Christian education, particularly Sunday school.

Sunday school is where we train up the next generation of Christians. It= s even been said, A A Pastor is only as good as his Sunday school.@ You might have even heard about the new pastor who went to visit the children= s Sunday school class. The teacher introduced him and said, A Pastor, this morning we are studying the story of Joshua.@ A That= s great,@ said the pastor, A can anyone tell me who tore down the walls of Jericho?@ Little Johnny raised his hand and shyly said, A Pastor I didn= t do it.@ Somewhat taken back the pastor plugged on, A Oh come on! Who torn down the walls of Jericho?@ The teacher interrupted, A Pastor little Johnny is a good boy. If he says he didn= t do it, I believe him.@ Flustered the Pastor went to the Sunday school director and related the story to him. The director, looking worried, explained, A Well sir we= ve had some trouble with Johnny before. Let me talk to him and see what we can do.@ Really bothered now by the answers he was getting from the teacher and the director he went to the deacon board and related the whole story including the responses from the adults. A white haired gentleman thoughtfully stroked his chin and said, A Well Pastor, I move we just take the money from the general fund to pay for repairs on the wall and just leave it at that.@ Poor Pastor! He must have heard he was only as good as his Sunday school, and right now he knew he was in deep trouble!

Several years ago we went down to work in an orphanage in Mexico. A lot of you made that trip. These kids were well cared for, and the place was nice by their standards, but It was so sad to see these kids growing up without much of a hope for the future. They had everything they needed, and like I said, they were well cared for, but after spending their lives in the orphanage, at 18 they were on their own. They would try to find a job, but what opportunities did they have? With no family support, their futures looked pretty bleak. Maybe they could be field workers and live in a shed, or maybe work in a packing house and share a room with 15 of their closest friends. I= m not saying this to point fingers at the orphanage, accusing them of doing a bad job, because there are very few of our own kids that are ready to face the world at 18. It wasn= t the orphanage= s fault. What struck me as odd about all this was that there were American families who wanted these kids, some of these kids even had disabilities, and they still wanted to give them a home and at least an opportunity for a brighter future. But the Mexican government wouldn= t let them go, or made is so hard and expensive that the people who were trying to adopt would, after years of trying, eventually give up.

Last year, across the river, there was a heated election over water rights. You remember the signs? A What= s more precious that gold? Amador= s water.@ Well today I want to talk about something that is even more precious than Amador= s water. The Mexican government had this figured out. Our most precious resource is not our water, or timber, or gold, or oil. It= s our children. Our kids are our future. In order for us to grow and thrive as a people, as a Christian community, our children must be a very high priority. Think what will happen if just one generation drops the ball on training up their children in the Christian faith? There will no more churches in a little over 40 years.

There have always been distractions from outside trying to woo our kids away. There has never been a generation that has had to endure such a strong pull from the internet and the media like our kids must endure. And it is up to us to train up a child in the way he should go, so that when he is old he will not depart from it. Today= s child lives in a culture where hard core pornography is everywhere. They are being seduced daily. The porn industry is trying to emulate the cigarette companies. Get them hooked early and you will have a customer for life. Our kids need us to be advocates for them. Sin is a powerful barrier between our children and God. This is where the Christian community must ban together and try to counteract the powerful pull of the media and the culture. I came across some eye opening information as I was researching this message. The most popular TV Broadcast is Desperate Housewives. For which age group would you guess? Ages 9-12. There are over 110 million TVs in the US, and the average child spend 4 hours a day in front of one; more than any other activity besides sleeping. So I don= t have to tell you TV has a big influence over how our precious children view life. On the average, Desperate Housewives notwithstanding, sexually explicit scenes occur at the rate of 4.5 times an hour. And of course none of these scenes result in an unplanned pregnancy, or an STD which affect 25% of the teenagers. By the age of 18 a child in the US will have seen 16,000 simulated murders, and about 200,000 acts of violence. There is more than just a casual connection here. The Surgeon General= s report says the more realistically the violence is portrayed, the greater the likelihood it will be learned. Children under the age of 8 cannot discriminate between real life and fantasy/ entertainment, and they quickly learn that violence is an acceptable solution to resolving life= s problems. Another paper says that violence is like nicotine in cigarettes, it= s addictive and we build up a tolerance so the media has to keep pumping ever increasing violence onto us because we build up a tolerance. The Surgeon General= s study said television violence is a contributing factor to the increase in violent crime and antisocial behavior. I= m not saying that every child who watches television will become a porn addict on an axe murderer. Other forces must also converge, like it did in Columbine or Virginia Tech. But just as every cigarette increases the chance of lung cancer, every exposure to TV violence increases the chance that one day our child will behave more violently than they would have otherwise. It= s not worth the risk.

Our kids are like little information sponges. The period of life when we learn the most. Not grade school, the first three years. Babies soak up everything that= s around them, good or bad. When Cheryll was a little toddler her mom said she would run around the house singing, A sun fish, sun fish@ . They thought it was a cute little kid song. It wasn= t until she said it with the right inflection, and a stomp of her little foot, that they knew what she was saying, A S-o-n of a fish.@ Oops! Oh be careful little mouth what you say, because it may come right back at you one day.

My lesson today was not meant to be on the evils of TV, but importance of church and Sunday school in the training our kids. In our society right now Christianity has been all but banded from public life. Thankfully, we can still talk about God and sin, and Heaven and hell in church. But there is a day coming when that may even be taken away. I may have the opportunity to talk about these things in prison, as one of the guests. There was legislation pending this year that, if passed, will make it illegal preach that homosexuality is a sin. They are trying to make it into a hate crime. All sin is hated by those who love God. So I guess if that passed we would all be guilty.

My point is if we don= t give our kids the opportunity to experience Jesus in a safe, loving environment, in a Christian community, they are not going to get it from TV or school, and they will grow up in a religious vacuum so to speak, and just fall away. And our precious little babies will drift to and fro, ever at the mercy of those who like to prey off the weak, or worse, be doomed to spend eternity in that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Psychologists know that the first things we learn stay with us the longest. We form lasting first impressions, and it takes a long time to undo this. This is why kids need Sunday school and church at an early age. Our precious babies need a good foundation; we can= t wait until they are old enough to decide for themselves. We wouldn= t tolerate this is any other area of our lives. We wouldn= t wait until they are old enough to decide if they want to go to school, wait until they are old enough to decide if they want to help around the house, or clean their rooms, or eat their veggies. No! Our text for today, Proverbs 22:6, says A Train up a child in the way he should go so when he is old he will not depart from it.@ This isn= t telling us to leave the child alone and he will sort out for himself what is best, let them raise themselves. We know this won= t work. If left to raise themselves they will become totally messed up and mixed up in this crazy world in which we live. This verse also doesn= t say make them conform to what we want them to be, make them into little extensions of us. Each child is different and has different gifts and abilities. Train them up in the way they should go. Our kids are not all the same, and the path of one will be different from that of another. But of course they all need to be trained in the ways of the Lord. Eph 6:4, A Fathers do not exasperate your children but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.@ It is our responsibility to train our kids, not public school or daycare. If we want our kids to be good, upstanding, moral adults we need to train them the way in which they should go. It= s not hard to make a tree or a child grow right if you train them when they are young, but to try and straighten them out after you= ve allowed things to go wrong is not an easy matter. This is why Sunday school and church are so important for our little kids. It gives them a good start. So Sunday school and Children= s church are important for the little ones.

What about teenagers? It= s a scary thing to send your kids out into the world. When your kids have a personal relationship with the Lord who loves them, we at least have the hope that they will be spared some of the problems associated with worldly living. What parent wouldn= t love to have total confidence that their child was going to live a life that will glorify God? I= m not saying that just because you bring them to church they will never stray, but chances are extremely better that they won= t stray if they do have that relationship with God. As parents we need to stack the deck in our favor all we can. This is just the follow through on raising children. We don= t just start them off in church and Sunday school as babies and then leave them on their own. Some people will disagree here. They say they will not force their kids to go to church. Why not? We make them clean their rooms, go to school, do their homework. And it is really a non issue if the training starts early and is consistent. God gave us 7 days in a week and He only asks that we get together to honor Him for a couple hours on Sunday. That= s not too much to ask. And parents, your kids are still watching, even if they pretend they are not. On Father= s Day I might come back to this. But dads, your sons are watching. There= s an old song, A Cat in the Cradle@ , and it goes. A I want to be like you dad, you know I want to be like you.@ That little sentence speaks volumes. A Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it@ . We train our teenage children by example. Last year at camp I was pushing the boys to tell me what they wanted to do when they grew up, what did they really enjoy doing? Javan was hanging tough, man he wouldn= t commit. Finally I drug it out of him he wanted to be a dad. Mike should be grinning from ear to ear to hear this. This tells me that Mike has done a good job of modeling good fatherly behavior to his son. We do this as Christians also when we model good Christian behavior to our kids. There= s a huge drop off of young men who quit coming to church when their dad= s don= t attend. When dads don= t come they are sending a subtle message that church is for women and kids, and what 12 year old boy wants to be labeled a kid? So right when they need church the most, they drop out. This holds true for moms as well.

All kids are very influenced by their peer group. They need the support of their peers. This was impressed upon Steve several years ago, and every year at camp he really stresses that during this week of camp that the high school boys become a community. This is so when they get out there in the world they will have guys with the same values that they can hang out with, and they can help hold each other up, and be accountable to one another. Mark Johnson, our camp speaker, tells the story of when he was in high school he felt like he was missing out. All the A cool@ kids were going to parties and getting wasted. It= s funny how people can make this sound so fun. No one ever mentions puking your guts out, wrecking your car, friends getting killed, lost drivers licenses, or worse, lost virginity, STD= s, all that other stuff that A will never happen to you@ when you= re a teenager. Anyway, Mark was determined to go to a party and get really wasted so he could be one of the A cool@ kids. Well he made the mistake of telling some of his Christian friends. The night came of the big party and just as Mark was pulling out of the driveway, another car pulls in and blocks him from leaving. Out of the car pile all his youth group buddies. A We love you man, and we= re not going to let you do this.@ Never would have happened if Mark had not been plugged into Sunday school and youth group. Being a teenager is a tough time of life. They are not a kid any longer, but they aren= t quite an adult yet. Just in limbo waiting to make the transition. Whenever we experience tumultuous times, teenager or not, we need to have the support of those who love us and care about us. This is why Sunday school and youth groups are so important for teenagers as well.

Life can be hard and we need the friendship of others, and church is a safe place where we can be loved and accepted. Sunday school and church builds a strong community of believers that encourage us and love us through the tough times and then celebrate the good times as well.

Ok so Sunday school and church are important for the little sponges we call kids, because first habits stick with you for life, right through the tumultuous years of adolescents. But why is Sunday school and church important for young adults? They no longer fit into the category referred to in our text, A Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he shall not depart from it.@ So I need to look at a different verse to point out their need for Sunday school and church, but especially Sunday school, because there is a dynamic that takes place in a small group setting that doesn= t happen anyplace else. Hebrews 10:25, page 851 in your pew Bibles. A Let us not give meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another- and all the more as you see the day approaching@ . People need people. We need to be in a community. And a community of believers is a great, safe place where we can feel loved and accepted. When we go through the tough times it is nice to have friends who have just been through these. Old people don= t remember, but people their own age know. They share the same struggles; being out of work, and having more mouths than money. Having a toddler that misbehaves, or worse, teenagers. Car problems, mother-in-law problems. Husband problems. Young adults need friends in the same stage of life who have the same values and beliefs. I love this verse in Hebrews. It gives us another great reason why we come to church. To encourage one another. Sunday school is a great place to do this, because it is basically a small group. In a small group you really get to build friendships and develop relationships with people with similar interests. It may be hard to get everyone out of the house on time to make it at 10:00, but in the end the relationships that are formed make it all worthwhile. I= m going to give a shameless plug here. Venita is leading a group of young adults, and the group is just forming so I would encourage all the young adults to make Sunday school a priority.

So, you finally made it, and ARPS even sends you a little card to prove it. So why does the ARPS crowd need to come to Sunday school? Referring back to our text in Hebrews, A Let us not give up meeting together as is the habit of some but encourage one another@ , this part still applies, but this is the part for us in the ARPS crowd- A and all the more as you see the day approaching@ . The day we get to see Jesus is getting closer for us, and we= ve got to be ready! We also go to Sunday school because we are Disciples of Christ first and foremost, until the day we die. And a disciple is by definition a student. So we are always students of Christ. It= s is hard to be a student if you never go to class. But the main reason is that love cannot exist in a vacuum.

Jesus gave us this command, to love one another. We can really love each other up when we are sitting in class together. Also, I am standing before you this morning because someone made sure that their little granddaughter got to go to Sunday school. She in turn became a follower of Christ and here I am too. Grandparents never understand the influence they have over their grandkids. We also go to Sunday school; be a model for them.

Philip Yancy wrote a great book titled , A Where is God When It Hurts?@ One day a man came up to him and said, A I don= t have much time could you answer that question for me in a sentence or two?@ Yancy said he thought for a second of two and said, A I guess I= ll have to answer that question with another one, > Where is the church when it hurts= ?@ I would add A Where is your small group and Sunday school class when it hurts?@

A Pastor from up north told a great story to illustrate the importance of community. He wrote that he had been praying regularly with the deacons for one of their members. His wife, Pat, attended their small congregation faithfully, but John hadn't been to church in years. So every Sunday afternoon before the evening service, we prayed for ways to communicate our commitment to John and his family. It wasn't long before we received an answer. During the morning service one week, Pat told the church through tears that John had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. A surgery was planned for the following week, and doctors were confident John would make a full recovery. The bad news was John would be out of work for months. He drove a log truck and was paid by the mile. There was no way he could recover while spending ten hours a day in a bumpy log truck, but if he didn't drive, John and Pat didn't get a paycheck.

The congregation sprang immediately into action. There was no question whether the congregation would pitch in to support the family in their time of need. That afternoon in an emergency business meeting, they sat around a long folding table and the head deacon, a trucker himself, asked with his characteristic boldness, "How much can everyone give?" Some pledged $50 or $100 a month; one family committed to pay for utilities and another for groceries, whatever the cost. Beginning immediately, Anchor Baptist Church took responsibility for the wellbeing of one of its families. All bills were paid on time; there was a new supply of groceries on the front steps every weekend; some of the men made sure the lawn was mowed and other maintenance issues around the house were addressed.

John has since rejoined the congregation. Months after his surgery John testified on a Sunday morning that the church's tireless care of his family had convinced him that the congregation did not simply want another warm body in the seats or an extra dollar in the offering plate; they were committed to sharing their lives and resources with him unconditionally.

People need people and together we can do way more than we can alone, and while church does fulfill a part of bringing us together as a community, small groups and Sunday school bring us together like nothing else.

We never out grow the need for Sunday school, any more than we ever out grow the need for a Savior. We will always be a disciple of Christ, a student. And in the small group setting we have a great way to build a good, strong, healthy community of believers. From the baby in diapers right on through adult hood. Children= s church and Sunday school for training of the kids, small groups and Sunday school for encouraging one another, and setting an example. We need Sunday school, and I= m not just saying that because I live with the Sunday School Director.

Please support Sunday school, Children= s church, sewing group, music group, men= s group, ladies group, Wednesday night church, women= s Bible study, young adult group, youth group, Ladies Missionary, and the other various small groups, so that we can grow into a strong, thriving community of Christians that bring glory and honor to His name.

Let= s pray. Lord I just thank you for this community of believers, and I just pray Lord that we can be all that you have intended us to be. May we be a strong community of believers that will impact our little portion of the world for You. Give us a passion for knowledge and a desire to be transformed into a people that will bring glory to your name. Lord I just thank you for those who volunteer with the nursery, and children= s Church, and Sunday school, bless them and may their hard work not go unnoticed. It is an important work they are doing, and we just thank you for them. Our children are most precious to us, thank you for them. And Lord I just pray You instill in each of us a passion for learning more about you. In Your precious name we pray, Amen.