I read an interesting article in the California Southern Baptists periodical – Can Sunday School be saved?
With declining attendance in Sunday School based on a LifeWay survey, the article discusses what can be done.
Ken Meyers, minister of Christian formation and education at Knollwood Baptist Church in Winston – Salem, NC, said the question is larger than the program of Sunday school.
“To make Christian education and spiritual formation offerings viable, we must understand our culture,” Meyers said. Past approaches were based on a “propositional” methodology, where new members were expected to regurgitate church propositions before entry into the congregation, he added.
Today’s approach to faith formation, Meyers said, must be founded on a “connectional” methodology that invites people “into conversations that connect their diverse stories with the common quest toward finding purposeful lives.”…
The culture of society is quite different than when the Sunday school reached its apex in the 1960s, Meyers said, but the churches continue to use approaches that no longer are effective. The result is plateaued and declining churches.
“Our church culture assumes that people will come to us, that the church is central to society, and that our faith formation is about propositions,” Meyers wrote in the church newsletter introducing [his new education plan.]
The new approach would better position the congregation to be in conversation with the community at large, Meyers asserted.
It’s hard for a traditional church to adopt new approaches, and I suppose that’s why there needs to be continued efforts in church planting. On the other hand, if a church is no longer being effective, its resources can be better used to support new churches.
I was talking to a friend who is helping a declining church with 5 people left. He is encouraging them to focus on church planting rather than reviving the current structure.