Reaching People Through Sunday School

"If you don't reach people, you can't even have Sunday School!" - Allan Taylor

The Church is charged with the task of reaching the lost world for Jesus Christ. Our mission is to make disciples of all nations (see Matthew 28:18-20). This does not mean that we want to stop with somone saying a prayer of confession and repentance towards Jesus. We want to, of course, "baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit", and have them publicly identify themselves as one who has been saved by God. But we also want to "teach them to observe all that He has commanded us". In other words we want them to live out their public confession before the world and reach out to others who have not heard about Jesus. Sunday School is a great place to do this.

Why is Sunday School so important? Here in our church, as in many churches, Sunday School is our largest area of ministry. Besides the corporate worship services, Sunday School is the place in which we have the most people participate every week. But unlike the corporate worship service, Sunday School is a place where we are grouped together in small groups and are able to build relationships with one another. In our corporate worship services, the main personal interaction time is found before and after the service and during the greeting time, which lasts all of a few minutes. Most people are coming in from Sunday School just minutes before the service starts and as soon as it is over they are ready to head out to lunch to beat the other churches to lunch or to get home in order to eat and take a nap. The point is this: these times before and after the service as well as the greeting time during the service are short and thus are not conducive to building strong lasting relationships with one another as the body of Christ.

Sunday School is a great place for us to interact with one another and build these relationships because in our view of Sunday School, it is not just a one hour a week Bible Study, but a small group of people doing life together...being the Church. People will travel and go to church to hear good preaching, but if that is all they get then they miss out on the sweet fellowship with the body of Christ that pushes us towards Christlikeness and we are told not to do that (Hebrews 10:24-25). This fellowship is encouraged in Sunday School as we participate in Bible study on Sunday mornings together, but also catch up with one another and make plans to spend time with one another and minister to one another during the week.

Sunday School is where we are grouped together by commonalities; in our church we do this through an age-graded system. Our Sunday School classes generally, but not all, have people roughly the same age as one another and are generally in the same life stage as each other. This helps with building those relationships among each other because normally they tend to have the same interests and schedules. So because this is the case, it is easier for them to invite others similar to them into the group to be a part of them and introduce them to the Gospel and eventually involve them in the life of the Church (disciple them).

We must be consciously focused outwardly on reaching people in our Sunday School classes. Reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ is what we are supposed to do primarily. Doing this through intentional and established relationships is effective; and these relationships are best established through our Sunday School classes doing life together. Yes, church is supposed to be a place where we have our needs met, but if it only becomes that then we have missed it. We must as the body of Christ be balanced and always looking Godward to become like Him, Inward by ministering to one another, but also Outward by reaching out to the lost world around us. Here at our church, Sunday School is our main strategy for reaching people for Jesus Christ, that we may know Him and make Him known.