It’s time to go back to Sunday School

It’s “back-to-school” season, which means parents are scouring supply lists, buying backpacks, and praying that their students find good teachers and friends. We understand intuitively that children need more than classrooms. They need relationships. They need someone to sit with them at lunch and teachers who help them grow. Ironically, many adults abandon that conviction the moment they graduate, convincing themselves that spiritual growth can flourish with little more than an occasional worship service and a podcast.

The greatest challenge facing many churches is not getting people into the worship service. It’s getting them into one another’s lives. In that light, it’s time that Christian adults went back to Sunday school.

Perhaps you scoff at the name. Fine. Refer instead to small groups, life groups, connect groups, or home groups. The perfect name is not essential. What is essential is the need for Christians to live out their faith among a community of other believers.

Christians have long recognized that spiritual formation happens best in smaller communities. Seventeenth-century German pietists gathered in homes for prayer and mutual encouragement. John Wesley organized believers into “classes” for accountability and discipleship. Later, evangelical churches developed Sunday School into an all-age ministry designed not merely to teach doctrine but to cultivate Christian community. Small groups help ensure that as churches grow larger, discipleship does not grow thinner.

But they are slipping.

A recent Lifeway research survey paints a sobering picture: At the average Protestant church, fewer than half (44%) of weekend worship attenders also participate in a Bible study, Sunday school class, or small group. That’s down from 49% just a decade earlier. More concerning still, there is nothing to suggest this steady erosion will reverse on its own.

The reasons are many: post-pandemic attendance habits, travel sports leagues, busyness, hyper-individualism, the fear of vulnerability, the church’s own neglect of small groups, and a growing distrust in institutions, to name a few. Diagnosing the problem is relatively easy. A more pressing question is, “What is the solution?” How do we convince believers of their need to engage in biblical community in ways that help them to follow Jesus in every part of their life?

I suggest we start with a basic question that drives much of human behavior, whether we care to admit it or not: What’s in it for me?

I believe the answer is found in three words, along with three diagnostic questions.

First, Christ. At the risk of stating the obvious, Christians need Christ-centered community to help them live out their Christian convictions. Some believers dismiss their own need for church small groups because they already enjoy meaningful friendships found in their tennis leagues, travel baseball parent groups, social media communities, or conversations before and after corporate worship services. Those relationships are valuable, but having community is not the same thing as having Christ-centered community. When relationships are ordered around Christ, the Word of God is opened, questions are asked, prayers are offered, and believers are encouraged to help one another follow Jesus. The goal is not merely to know one another better, but to help one another know Christ better.

Ask yourself: Who in my church is helping me to follow Jesus?

Second, confession. The Bible calls Christians to something our culture rarely celebrates, honest confession. James writes, “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). Notice that James connects healing with believers confessing their sins to one another and praying for one another. That kind of community requires trust, and trust requires relationships that are formed over time. Too many Christians worship in the same room week after week, while remaining strangers to one another. Consider this question: With whom in your church, outside of your family, can you share what’s really going on in your life? Who knows your temptations, your fears, your disappointments, and your sins well enough to pray for you and point you back to Christ? For far too many Christians, the answer is, no one.

Ask yourself: Would anyone in my church notice if my faith began to drift?

Third, casseroles. My wife and I recently found ourselves talking about a neighbor who was grieving the loss of a parent. As we reflected on her situation and the fact that she is not a believer, one thought kept coming back to us: How do people face such difficult circumstances without the support of a Christian community? Then I asked my wife, “And who will bring her casseroles?” Of course, the casserole is not really about the casserole. It’s about the hospital visit. The prayer in the living room. The childcare for exhausted parents. The New Testament envisions a church that bears one another’s burdens, weeping with those who weep, and rejoicing with those who rejoice. The church is a visible manifestation of a family God gives you long before you knew you needed one.

Ask yourself: When my life falls apart—and someday it will—who will be sitting in my living room?

Starting with what’s in it for me? is admittedly selfish, and only further feeds the consumeristic mindset so rampant in our modern churches. But it is the place most of us start, to be honest. Prayerfully—with the help of other believers—we grow beyond that question until we arrive at a place where we care more about what we can give than what we can get.

The early church gives us a helpful portrayal of biblical community, as believers practiced their faith in both the Temple courts and house to house (Acts 2:42-47). These believers engaged in life together through devotion to teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. In our modern churches, small groups are often viewed as a fellowship ministry within the church. But for the early church, this was a way of life.

So as you send your kids back to school this fall, perhaps it’s time for you to go back, too. Call it Sunday school, home group, life group, or something else. The name doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding that we are not meant to follow Jesus alone.