What is Critical? What is Often Overlooked? - Marjorie Tatter [2018]

What is Critical? What is Often Overlooked?

Written By Marjorie Tatter author of "Joyfully Serving Christ"

Do you know about Raymond Raikes?  He is credited with organizing and starting the first Sunday schools in the world near London, England in the mid 1760’s. Because public schools were nonexistent and financial times were precarious, only the gentry or upper-class children had the benefit of organized education.  The middle and lower-class children had to work hard in factories six days a week. Whatever free time they found was occupied largely by thieving. Raikes knew that these working children were just as capable of learning as the wealthier. He cared about these precious, illiterate souls, and wanted them to forsake their lives of theft and godlessness upon learning of the love of Christ, the Ten Commandments, and the Golden Rule. And so, taking advantage of the first massed produced Bibles, Raymond Raikes established Sunday Schools to teach children to read, using as their textbook, the Holy Bible.(All about the Sunday school-David J. Fant and Addie Marie French-second edition)

By the early 1800’s Sunday schools had spread to the New World especially on the east coast of the United States. It should be noted that in the New England area, the congregational churches had catechism classes teaching the basic doctrines of their churches as early as 1669 but not necessarily on Sunday with children.  In particular, Sunday schools were a feature in churches that declared Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and He alone.  Purchase the book from http://WhosoeverPress.com. The first Sunday schools in America were based on memorizing Bible verses and teaching a Bible lesson that taught moral behavior.  Singing songs was not an initial feature in the early Sunday schools. As the United States moved west, so did Sunday schools with many developing into churches.

The story is told of a man, possibly in the Baltimore, Maryland area, who had at least one doctorate in theology.  The man, possibly named Dr. Matthew, trained men for the pastorate during the week for a living; but on Sundays he taught Sunday school with the children younger than twelve years of age.  People told him to stop teaching the children because they were just kids and start teaching the adults.  He replied no. “Don’t you know that our children are the church of tomorrow?  The foundation must be solid!”  This man understood the importance of teaching our children!  Children are the greatest resource we have and their formation is of the utmost importance!

One of my goals of this book is to persuade you of the critical importance of children’s Sunday schools as part of the local church program.  I find it helpful to compare the human body to the local church program. The entire Sunday school curriculum should be likened to the skeleton system of the human body.  The bones provide structure and give room for our other major organs to work effectively.  Without our bones we would be a blob on the floor. Each book of the Bible can be likened to a bone of the body. The people: Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, Elijah and Elisha, Mary, Elisabeth, Peter, and Paul become alive to the student because their stories are recorded in the Bible; the most important book for the world. My father, Louis G. Tatter, Jr. was often the Sunday school superintendent in the churches we attended because of his knowledge of education.  When I first began teaching Sunday school at the tender age of fourteen, he taught me about the importance of Sunday school. Dad taught that until a person has read and studied under knowledgeable teachers, each book of the Bible, his comprehension of God’s message to us would be distorted.

Does your church have a working philosophy regarding the Sunday school ministry? So often the purpose of having a Sunday school is overlooked. Above all else, it has been a powerful tool for evangelism and church growth in the Republic of Chad, Africa since 1981. Take for example the Kyabe area; it was my habit to visit each church in a region that had sent in early January their yearly Sunday school report. These trips took place usually during the spring or Christmas vacation, when the children were home for a week. I had planned to visit the seventeen churches, visiting with at least two every day and thereby finishing within ten days. On arriving, I discovered there were at least twenty-six groups to visit instead of seventeen!  Several Sunday school teachers had started classes in neighboring towns over four kilometers (about 2.5 miles) away, so that the children too young (under seven years of age) to walk to their Sunday school class, would also be taught about Jesus.  I learned quickly that in the Kyabe region especially, because of the lack of pastors and teachers, a pastor had as many as four churches and I know at least one teacher taught three classes every Sunday!  The Kyabe area, within fifteen years, went from seventeen churches to at least twenty seven churches.  Why?  The children grew up and started their own church in that locality. In several instances the teachers went on to Bible School or Institute to be trained as the pastor.  When I left Chad in 2012 there were at least thirty eight Baptist churches in the Kyabe area, all the new ones had developed from having been a Sunday school class! Truly Sunday schools can be a powerful tool of evangelism and church planting!