{"id":32432,"date":"2022-09-10T16:09:21","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T21:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/how-the-forgotten-history-of-sunday-school-can-point-the-way-forward\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T16:09:21","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T21:09:21","slug":"how-the-forgotten-history-of-sunday-school-can-point-the-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/how-the-forgotten-history-of-sunday-school-can-point-the-way-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Forgotten History of Sunday School Can Point the Way Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Etching of Robert Raikes with a student<\/div>\n

By Aaron Earls<\/em><\/p>\n

Robert Raikes was like a lot of cause-oriented millennial evangelicals. As a writer, he stuck to impartial reporting instead of sensational \u201cfake news.\u201d He fought against inhumane prison conditions and founded a program to educate underprivileged children.<\/p>\n

But Raikes wasn\u2019t a millennial. He was born in 1736, not 1986.<\/p>\n

He was, however, part of a generation of Christians who sought to live out their faith in the public square for the good of others. And part of those efforts included the founding of Sunday school.<\/p>\n

Sunday school beginnings<\/h3>\n

Visiting a friend outside his hometown of Gloucester, England, Raikes observed local children cursing, gambling, and fighting, according to Thomas Walters\u2019 1930 biography Robert Raikes, Founder of Sunday School.<\/p>\n

Horrified, he asked a local woman standing outside her door about it. She replied, \u201cThis is nothing [compared] to what goes on on Sundays. You\u2019d be shocked indeed if you were here then.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The woman told Raikes people couldn\u2019t even read the Bible in peace at church due to the chaos caused by the children. They, along with their parents, worked at a factory every day of the week except Sunday. So on that day \u201cthey behaved in a most unrestrained way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raikes returned home determined to help children like those he saw. He was the publisher of a local paper, so his mind probably went quickly to literacy and education.<\/p>\n

During that time, education was primarily the realm of the middle class or higher, according to John Mark Yeats, associate professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany children of the poor worked horrible hours in factories during the week\u2014often in excess of 12 hours a day,\u201d says Yeats. \u201cThose on the lower end of the economic spectrum often did not have access to educational opportunities due to their overburdened work schedules, which kept them trapped in a cycle of poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walters writes that when Raikes opened his Sunday school in July 1780, he spent the next week inviting children from poor families to participate. Many objected that their children did not have proper clothes for school. Raikes responded that if the children\u2019s clothing was fit for the streets, it was fit for them to come to his school.<\/p>\n

Those first school days began at 10 a.m. with teaching. The students were dismissed for lunch and came back around 1 p.m. After a reading lesson, they would go to a church service. That was followed by another round of classroom instruction until around 5:30 p.m. when they were sent home.<\/p>\n

After more than three years of Sunday school, Raikes published a small account of its successes in his newspaper, making no mention of his own involvement. Others had started similar programs in previous decades, but papers in London picked up Raikes\u2019 story and the idea began to spread.<\/p>\n

By this time, the number of children in Raikes\u2019 program had grown to several hundred and increased weekly.<\/p>\n

Employers began to notice a change in the children\u2019s behavior. \u201cThey have been transformed from the shape of wolves and tigers to that of men,\u201d said one manufacturer.<\/p>\n

Other evangelical reformers\u2014including several better known now for abolition efforts\u2014began to join the Sunday school movement. Hannah More started Sunday schools around her home with the financial support of William Wilberforce and the encouragement of John Newton, the former slave trader turned minister and author of the hymn \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome historians have posited that the Sunday school movement did more to empower the lower class than any other thing in the early 19th century,\u201d says Yeats.<\/p>\n

What began as a small group with Raikes in 1780 grew to more than 200,000 students across England in only 20 years. By 1850, the number had climbed to 2 million. This does not even include the number of parents and siblings who were taught by children bringing their lessons home from Sunday school.<\/p>\n

As education became more common, Sunday schools began to transition into a religious training program for all ages. \u201cWe see this happen rather quickly in the U.S.,\u201d says Yeats. By the 1840s, what was once known as the Baptist General Tract Society expanded its work to include biblical education material for all ages and became the American Baptist Publication and Sunday School Society.<\/p>\n

This transition continued until today when Sunday school is almost exclusively seen as a means to teach Christians more about the faith they\u2019ve already come to embrace. To many, its evangelistic and social cause origins remain unknown. But others continue the tradition of Raikes by using Sunday school to reach beyond the walls of the church to those in need around them.<\/p>\n

Modern movement<\/h3>\n

What started as a service project for Sherrie Poirrier\u2019s Sunday school class at First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, has grown into its own nonprofit organization to serve a mobile home park.<\/p>\n

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As part of FBC Woodstock\u2019s LoveLoud initiative, Poirrier says, her Sunday school group went one day to the park to give out free clothing, household items, furniture, and Bibles. The group also offered free haircuts and legal advice.<\/p>\n

After that day, Poirrier says her heart was broken for the people there. She immersed herself in a bread ministry already serving the mobile home park. Eventually, she became the leader of Living Bread Ministry and wanted to do more as she saw the overwhelming needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s right in our town and most don\u2019t even realize it,\u201d Poirrier says. \u201cPeople are strangled by the bondage of drugs, domestic abuse, and alcohol. Many of the children have parents with felony records who cannot find employment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much like Raikes centuries earlier, Poirrier saw the needs and wanted to bring the gospel to bear on her community\u2014and it started with helping to educate the children who lived in the mobile home park. \u201cWe have a camper on one of the lots where we provide free tutoring to the children,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

The ministry offers Bible studies to the men and women on Saturday and specific year-round activities for the families. Funded solely by donations from Christians, Living Bread Ministries helps those in the area with groceries, medical bills, clothing, car repairs, and school supplies.<\/p>\n

Ross Ramsey is doing a similar ministry to a local apartment complex with First Baptist Church in Allen, Texas. Volunteers from Sunday school classes come to a Saturday training and then go into the neighborhood to help people and share the gospel.<\/p>\n

The church had recently begun a new initiative and the apartment complex was \u201cbegging\u201d for the church to come over to help. \u201cIt was a marriage between tools and a place to use the tools,\u201d Ramsey says.<\/p>\n

He says the outreach\u2014driven by Sunday school\u2014has resulted in an explosion in leaders, increased personal evangelism, members discovering their identity in Christ, and a more diverse congregation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen anything like this that has gotten people from being passive in the pews to being ambassadors for Christ in the street,\u201d Ramsey says.<\/p>\n

Sunday school is the perfect place to start an outreach ministry, he says, because that\u2019s where a church\u2019s labor pool is. \u201cOur Sunday schools were full of people not doing anything, so that\u2019s where I started.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Salem Evangelical Covenant Church in Oakland, Nebraska, started as well. The 50 people gathered each week would take up a Sunday school offering. It was barely enough to cover the costs of their children\u2019s curriculum, says Kate Webster. Then she visited her niece\u2019s church and got an idea.<\/p>\n

Salem Covenant took an old shoebox and \u201cbedazzled it\u2014just covered it with gemstones and ribbons,\u201d she says. The church also decided to use the Sunday school offering to bless others. \u201cOne Sunday a month, we would give what was collected to a person or anything we thought could benefit from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The very first week of using the Sunday school offering for others, the church received more than three times what it had previously gotten in an entire year. The money was given to a local family in need.<\/p>\n

Since then the tiny church has given away tens of thousands of dollars. One project involves giving the church kids money to spend on gifts for kids at the local children\u2019s home. \u201cIt\u2019s just great to see the kids search so hard for a deal so they can get more things for the other kids,\u201d Webster says.<\/p>\n

The church is thrilled it\u2019s been able to give so much away, but Webster is clear this is about more than the money. \u201cIt\u2019s about the love, the prayers, and support being shared with our community and even those beyond it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about teaching our kids\u2014and adults\u2014what\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those efforts are reminiscent of Raikes and the founding of Sunday school itself. Yeats says it\u2019s what modern-day churches should keep in mind. \u201cThere are amazing ways to transform a community, if we can be attentive to societal needs, meet those needs, and ensure the gospel is communicated clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n

To capture the heart of Sunday school\u2019s origin and continue that into the 21st century, modern Sunday school programs must reach beyond their classroom walls, according to Yeats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen our Sunday schools become only training programs for devoted Christians to get more knowledge,\u201d he says, \u201cthey miss out on the very thing that made the initial foray into the project so worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Aaron Earls<\/h2>\n

@WardrobeDoor<\/p>\n

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Aaron is a writer for LifewayResearch.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n