More Ways to Improve Sunday School Attendance
"You're Not Really Teaching As Many Lessons As You Think"
(and kids are attending fewer of them)
The honest math and what to do about it
an article with specific suggestions from Neil MacQueen
There are 52 Sundays in a year, but the number of Sundays available for Sunday School teaching is far fewer than you think.
Due to special Sunday morning programming, unexpected cancellations (like for weather), and scheduled cancellations (like the Sunday after Christmas), MANY Sunday Schools are lucky to have 40 quality class times available per year.
If you don't teach during the summer, subtract 10 more and you're making available only 30 Sunday School lesson times a year for students to attend.
And because your kids don't attend every single week (whose do?), the number of actual lessons the average students will attend is MUCH LOWER than 30.
Read on for more about these numbers and what we can do about them.
Here's the "Available Sundays" Math...
There are four types of "cancelations of Sunday School" that take our 52 potential Sunday morning class times down to as few as 30 every year.
Scheduled Cancellations: (5 a year):
The Sundays that fall on or just before/after Christmas and New Years, Easter, July 4th, and Labor Day weekend.
Unscheduled Cancellations: (3 to 5 a year):
A weather or building-related cancellation. A teacher doesn't show up and the substitute is unprepared. The teacher comes unprepared or punts the lesson plan. The adult class cancels their class, depressing attendance in children's classes.
Cancellations Due to Church Programming: (3 to 5 a year):
Choir and play practice, Church Picnic Sunday, the Sunday School party, a special Advent service. And when worship runs long, making the teachers punt their lesson plan.
Canceling Summer Sunday School. (10 to 12 a year)
Read some thoughts about this type of "cancellation" below.
Some people will consider such cancellations "inevitable" and "unavoidable," and a few probably are. But in a time of diminishing attendance, reducing the number of classes we offer, if they are awesome, is unacceptable. We need to make the most of every opportunity and rack up more attendance per student, not less. To do that, churches will need to change some of their old habits and ways of thinking, and there's no better place to start than with some simple math.
40 Available Sundays become 30 without summer classes
Subtract 10 Sundays from your 40 available Sunday mornings if your church doesn't hold summer classes. Whether or not you think your church should be doing summer Sunday School, it's important to realize that the decision to cancel 25% of your potential Sunday School classes every year is not without teaching consequences. It may have made sense back when kids attended more often, but eliminating 25% of our teaching and points of contact in these diminished days doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even if your summer attendance is half or a third of your regular season, in an era of reduced overall attendance, for those who DO show up there is an opportunity for teaching God's word and for relationship building.
POINT: In an era of diminished and irregular attendance, EVERY SUNDAY MATTERS MORE -- especially to the children who show up. (As long as you're not boring them! 25% more of what's not working isn't a good idea.)
Some will say they "can't" or "we tried that." Love them, but don't necessarily believe them. I've been in churches where we successfully challenged the "can't" attitude and turned our summer teaching into something special.
Now... If you have very FEW elementary-age kids enrolled in your Sunday School, then I get why you don't think you can do a "normal" Summer Sunday School if only 2 kids show up. But to those 2 kids, it IS important. So let me suggest you redefine "normal" and do something special for "whenever one or two are gathered." Then consider redefining when and where else you can teach during the summer. Whatever you do, don't give up 25% of your year without trying something different, and trying again.
Even your "regular attenders" are attending less than you think
Some churches have more regular attendance than others, but almost all are facing fewer numbers, increased irregularity, and a new definition of "active." Times and demographics are changing. So for illustrative purposes, I've simply divided attendance into two halves. Your numbers will vary (and for some they will be worse.)
If HALF of your students attend three-quarters of the time (wish) that means they are, at best, attending 30 lessons out of a possible 40. And if you're in a church where "the new regular" means "2 out of 4 Sundays," then they are attending only 20 lessons a year.
If you do NOT have summer classes, and only have 30 or so available September to May, then your three-quarter time attending students are only getting 20 to 23 lessons a year.
Averaged together, the HALF of your students who are only attending 0, 1, or 2 times a month are only attending an average of 10 lessons per year out of your 40 available. TEN. (And as you will read below, they could attend those 10 and entirely miss the major stories of the Bible. 
)
If you do not have summer classes, then the low-attending HALF of your kids could be getting just 7 lessons a year.
TO RECAP:
Your regular attenders are showing up for 23 to 30 lessons a year
and your lower & irregular attenders are only getting 7 to 10 lessons a year
...at most.
We've got our work cut out for us, but let's start with "clawing back" a few of the Sunday teaching opportunities we've given up.
7 Ways to "Claw Back" 5 to 10 Sunday School Lesson Times a Year (which will also increase the number of lessons your kids can attend)
More quality classes per year certainly benefit regular attenders, but they also give infrequent attenders more learning opportunities to plug into -- and that gives you more opportunities to connect with them and their parents.
1. Hold a VBS -- it's easily worth 5 full classes a year. In the "old" days, VBS was seen as an outreach to the community. In this new era, VBS is also an important "make up" for declining and irregular Sunday School attendance. A surprising number of churches don't do VBS anymore. The trends and the math should change that.
(Aside: Given the numbers, why are we only holding one VBS per year? Why not consider an additional scaled-back "VBS" over Christmas break, for example?)
2. "Claw back" one or two scheduled and unscheduled Sunday School cancellations. Have a substitute teacher with a plan. Don't give up lesson time to the special Advent programming (like ornament-making "events" and adult-choir concerts). Buy a portable AC unit for your un-cooled classroom(s). See "how we won back Father's Day attendance" below.
3. Insist that Adult Classes follow the same schedule as the Children's Sunday School and that they include offerings that attract parents. Kids don't drive themselves.
4. Redesign your Sunday School special events, such as fall kickoff, parties, and picnics, to include Bible learning.
5. Attack one of the "Annual Low Attendance Sundays" with special efforts. See my "Father's Day" suggestions below.
6. Stop wasting class time and "claw back" 5 minutes every Sunday. This will result in an additional 100 minutes (2 to 3 class times!) over the course of 20 attendances. See the Rotation.org article about "Time Stealers" and ways to optimize shortened lesson times.
7. Extend Sunday School another week into the summer and start it a week earlier. People generally will start and stop Sunday School when your schedule decides it will so don't be so quick to end it in May and start it later in August (or after Labor Day). Even if your attendance is lower on those "cusp" summer Sundays, you will get some attendance -- and in this era every Sunday attended counts. (Better yet, add a summer Sunday School.)
Let the math work for you, instead of against you.
If you can only "claw back" 3 Sunday School lesson time per year, over the course of a child's "lifespan" in our Sunday School it would be like adding half a year of Sunday School attendance -- and who wouldn't pray for that!
These "claw back" suggestions won't necessarily IMPROVE FREQUENCY of ATTENDANCE. They are mostly focused on creating more available Sundays to teach. Adding more of the "same old Sunday School" that kids won't really enjoy or learn much in is a waste of their time AND YOURS. That's why I love the Workshop Rotation Model -- because it makes every attendance an awesome lesson experience. See some animated presentations about the Model.
Other places and times to insert "lesson time" outside of Sunday School:
- Insist that your children's fellowship teach Bible lessons, not just "values" lessons, and do so in memorable ways (including how much time they spend actually teaching a Bible lesson).
- Sing! Singing our faith is one of the best ways to build it. If you don't have a children's choir or Bible musical/play component to your programming, start one. And make sure the content of your songs gets discussed.
- Insert Bible lessons into intergenerational and family ministry events.
- Have your children's sermons follow the stories being taught in Sunday School (rather than the random approach most pastors use to decide what to say). And if you don't have children's sermons, bring them back and include older kids. Children's sermons don't replace lesson plans and a teacher, but they do support them.
I want to encourage you to read "The Top Ten Low Attendance Sundays" by Thom Rainer. What he didn't write about was "what to do about them," and in some cases, the answer is "plenty." In the article above, I mentioned the "Christmas VBS" idea. Below is how one of my former churches turned traditionally low attendance on Father's Day into one of our most looked-forward to Sundays.
How we increased attendance on Father's Day Sunday -- One of the Ten Lowest Attended Sundays of the Year
Father's Day Sunday is one of the ten lowest attended Sundays of the year across the Church. I knew this from experience, and Thom Rainer at ChurchAnswers confirmed it in his poll of pastors. It's right up there with the Sunday after Christmas, and the Sunday of Labor Day. But why?
The answer is three-fold.
(1) It comes in mid-June when schools are letting out and many families go on vacation.
(2) It's often the first Sunday (or near it) when "regular Sunday School" has ceased and the summer schedule has begun.
And (3) it has to do with Dads who already attend church less, and on that Sunday families want to be with Dad.Here's how we made Father's Day Sunday a "Must Go" Sunday
1. Every year, we did something that celebrated "dads" and let everyone know what was coming.
One year we invited a local Christian coach to talk after worship during a Dad's Brunch (to which families were invited, then kids went to a special lesson time). He talked about struggling to spend time with his job and his kids. We also got unexpected insights from him about how he mentors players whose fathers were not in their lives. (Elevating being "coach dads.")
Another year we celebrate grandfathers too and all the "men" who had mentored children (and how to do that).
Another year we celebrate (and discussed) "Moms and their sons" including hearing from moms.
One of our guest speakers was a local therapist who spoke about "losing his dad," and one of the dads spoke about "losing a child." (That class was incredible.)
Sounds sexist, but we got HUGE SUPPORT from the women of the congregation. Offering a "Dad's breakfast" as part of the event was important.
2. Every couple of years we invited Dads to a special Sunday School class with their kids -- at which we had several dads and grandpas dress up as "men from the Bible."
We narrated their stories while the actors "posed" and silently reacted to the good, the bad, and the funny things said about them in their Bible story. We also had some teens dress up (including sons Jacob and Esau). It was a massive lesson about grace and forgiveness. At the end, they all came together to pray out loud for each other and for the kids, and then they signed autographs with the kids! (Which was hugely funny because we told the kids to treat them like rockstars.) This group was really easy to recruit because of the comradery it fostered, and they said "yes" to doing Sunday School dramas at later times.
After the second year of doing something special on Father's Day, the Women's Association started something for Mothers and Daughters, but not on Sunday. Everyone seemed to recognize the special needs here. In the long run, it made our Adult Ed offerings more attuned to family needs and to the baggage many adults carry from their upbringing. The direct payoff for Sunday School was that the adults brought their kids on those Sundays.
There are two responses to these "low attendance Sundays." One is accept the way it is and do nothing. The other is to try something different. In these days where every attendance matters, it's time to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
