In these days of lower and more irregular attendance, it is not only important to improve THE QUALITY OF EACH LESSON when students DO show up, we need to PAY CLOSER ATTENTION to the stories we are teaching them.
Simply put, not all Bible stories are created equal. Some are more important to know, especially for children, and especially for those attending less often. You can debate WHICH are more important, but you can't debate that we only have so many lesson time slots, so we have to choose wisely.
Good Samaritan > Man with the withered hand
Ten Commandments > Ten Plagues
Beatitudes, Sermon on the Mount > Letters of Paul
Cross and Resurrection > Minor and Major Prophets
And yet, Lectionary-based curriculum gives each story the same amount of class time, with little or no consideration for how well-attended certain Sundays really are. And Lectionary-based curriculum schedule what most educators would consider "second and third tier" stories for children at the expense of more important first-tier stories. See examples below.
Here's why Lectionary-based curriculum is a bad idea for today's Sunday School attendance patterns:
If you are using a Lectionary-based curriculum that changes the Bible story EVERY WEEK...
- Up to one-quarter of the stories they think you should be teaching every year will go unused because you don't have 52 Sunday School classes a year. As the math in the previous article demonstrates, you've got something closer to 30 or 40 classes a year to spend with your students.
- Your low and irregular attenders will probably only hear 10 of your Bible stories each year. (Which begs the question: "Which 10?" See more about that below.)
- And with a Lectionary-based curriculum, even your REGULAR ATTENDERS can miss many of the more important Bible stories.
Real Examples from Lectionary-based curriculum:
Irregular and Regular Attenders in a Lectionary-based Sunday School can be showing up for Rahab instead of Ruth, or Judges instead of Jesus stories.
Instead of learning Jesus' parables about the Good Samaritan and Prodigal Son, your Lectionary that day has them learning what Jesus said about paying taxes or paying the workers in the vineyard.
And if you're following the Lectionary in the curriculum example below, most of your kids could be missing Luke 2's Birth of Jesus and the stories of the Empty Tomb, which the Lectionary schedules on low attendance Sundays (What else they miss gets worse -- read on.)
Proof of the point.
Attached are screenshots of the three-year Lectionary cycle of a MAJOR denominational and ecumenical curriculum publisher (who shall remain mercifully nameless). I've added comments to the screenshots.
Click to enlarge
If you don't want to view the screenshots, then just soak this in:
Nowhere in this three year "Lectionary-based" scope and sequence of lessons do they teach the stories of:
Moses and the Exodus, Ruth, David, Elijah, Daniel, Esther,
Parables of the Prodigal Son, The Good Samaritan, or The Sower.
(and yet they teach some stories that are "third-tier" at best)
They also schedule some "major" stories at some very strange times. The only time they schedule Luke 2, the Birth of Jesus is on Christmas Sunday -- when most Sunday Schools are closed. See the screenshots for more comments and remember to think kind things about the well-meaning people who created this mess.
The question marks on the screenshot are me wondering why they'd pick that story over so many other more important stories for kids.
- For example, why does this Lectionary-based curriculum teach kids about "paying taxes" in November of Year A? ( I'll tell you why -- because preachers want a text to help them with the annual pledge drive.)
- And why are kids learning about Mattias the Disciple in Year B when there's not a single lesson about the Exodus, Passover, David, or Daniel?
- The sequence of stories is also baffling. Spring Year A starts Lent with the sin of Adam and Eve, then jumps to Abram's Call, then to the Woman at the Well because????
Even if we excuse Lectionary curriculum's eccentricities, their failure to schedule both quality and quantity teaching time on the stories of the Exodus, Birth of Jesus, and Holy Week should disqualify them as curriculums for kids.
Here's a better idea for building a Sunday School "Lectionary"
In an era of lower attendance and more irregular attendance conspiring to give us only 10 lessons a year with half our students, we should ask ourselves this question:
Which 10 Bible stories do we want them to learn?
In the attached Lectionary-based curriculum example, it is entirely possible for a low-attendance student to never attend a lesson about a "major" Bible story, and only show up for the following 8 or 10 "minor" stories:
The Two Masters, The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, The Sadducees' Question, Isaiah's Call, Flight to Egypt, Jesus Teaches about Anger, Woman at the Well, The Pool of Siloam, and Early Believers Gather, and God's House Has Many Rooms.
I love these stories, but they third-tier stories at best for children and new Christians -- especially if they are the only lessons that will be attended!
Those of us who CHOOSE the Workshop Rotation Model don't have "Lectionary-based" problems. We create our teaching schedules around the the MAJOR stories of the Bible, and don't "waste" precious Sunday attendances on minor stories. We also try to put key stories at higher-attendance times of the year.
We also spend more than one week per story -- up to 4 or 5 in most cases. This block scheduling creates two important results:
- Regular attenders get real depth on major stories by attending a different workshop each week about that same story for several weeks in a row.
- Low and irregular attenders are always getting major stories, not minor or obscure ones.
In Summary:
Without such major story scheduling as the Rotation Model provides, both your irregular and regular attenders suffer.
With a Rotation Model-like emphasis on teaching the majors in blocks, the teaching needs of irregular and regular attenders both get met.
And if the trends are true, the emphasis on "majors" will become even more important as the definition of "regular" attendance changes.
What's a "Major" Bible Story?
Surprisingly, there's large agreement among Christian educators about what the "major Bible stories" are! They include the stories of Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, David, Daniel, Jesus' Birth, Holy Week, Parables, Beatitudes, and various miracle stories. It's not hard to come up with 10 or 12 major stories a year for a three to five-year scope.
See Rotation.org's lists of major Bibles stories for kids submitted by churches, pastors, and Christian educators from many different denominations and types of churches.
What you WON'T SEE on those lists are about 1/2 of the stories being scheduled by Lectionary-based curriculum. Not that those stories are wrong, it's just that"if they don't know the majors, then the minors don't matter."
Who really likes the Lectionary approach?
Besides the paper curriculum publishers? Probably your pastor.
Many pastors think everyone, including the children, should be "learning the same stories I'm preaching about." And that's why your curriculum has your kids learning about paying taxes to Caesar when it's the sermon scripture. But are all your sermons following your own rule? (Doubt it.) And are you forcing the Adult classes to follow this rule? (Probably not.) So let's get real...
Children are not adults
...and if we had only 10 Bible stories we could teach each year so that EVERY student learned them, we Christian educators know which stories we'd pick (and so do you, so let's pick them).
Parting Shot
Even when attendance was more frequent and regular, changing the Bible story every week was TOO FAST for the kids and the teachers. It produced shallow memories and preparation exhaustion.
And it created some weird "jumping around" in the Bible, such as this incomprehensible gem from that Lectionary-based curriculum's Year A.
We can do better, and we must.
Notes:
The "Revised Common Lectionary" is a three-year cycle of Bible passages that many churches follow to schedule which scriptures they will read and teach every Sunday. Most Sunday School curriculums follow a version of that three-year cycle -- putting upwards of 150 Bible stories on their 3-year "Scope and Sequence." Most modify what the Lectionary tells them should be on their schedule. But regardless of their list modifications, they're all teaching a new Bible story every single week.
And because they follow the "Church Year," the Lectionary unfortunately schedules certain important stories on Sundays when many Sunday Schools don't hold classes. Christmas Day and Easter Sunday, for example. It also schedules important stories, such as The Road to Emmaus, after Easter when attendance is very low. This kind of scheduling is evidence that the Lectionary was designed for preaching, not teaching. (I could make a case that it's not great for preaching either. Stories like Emmaus should be taught when attendance is higher!)
The argument that THE PACE of story change is educationally absurd has been made elsewhere at Rotation.org by Rotation Model enthusiasts. These same enthusiasts also point out the ridiculous proposition made by the Lectionary approach that The Man with the Withered Hand deserves as much lesson time as The Prodigal Son -- which it simply does not. There is a "hierarchy" of stories within the Bible, and in fact, the Lectionary itself creates its own. The problem is that "their" hierarchy was created for preachers, not Sunday School. So why do curriculum publishers insist on following it? I'm going to stop here before I get in trouble... 
