Pagan Christianity rebuttal - #3, Sunday School

Some of you may wonder if I like anything in this book by Viola and Barna in "Pagan Christianity".

Here's one where they hit it and then miss telling us why Sunday school is not effective.

On page 213, "As a whole, we don't view the contemporary Sunday school as an effective institution. According to some studies, Sunday school attendance has been on the decline over the last two decades.

Describing the way of the early church, one scholar says, 'There is no evidence to suggest that teachers divided groups on the basis of age and sex. The responsibility of the child's early education and in particular, religious education lay with the parents...No special arrangements seem to have been made for children by the early church. The Christian school was a long way off (around AD 372) the Sunday school even more so.'"

THEPLANTER speaks, The point I wish to agree with is that the Sunday school is not an effective institution. I also strongly agree that the responsibility of discipleship and spiritual authority lies with the parents.

I take issue with the fact that they use numbers to discredit the Sunday school when it is a much deeper issue. Far too many parents give it all up (spiritual authority) without knowing it when they take their kids to Sunday school. In the eyes of their children doing this causes them to look at their teacher as the one of spiritual authority. When this happens a good thing for children becomes a huge detriment for them spiritually. When children shift spiritual authority from their parents to their teachers parents lose a God given tool they rarely if ever get back.

How sad to assume that the Sunday school teacher is even doing a good job as many teachers are there because no one else will take the job or fill the empty seat. What really goes on in the classroom anyway? Is the focus in the classroom teaching children to live like Jesus or is it to have a good time or remember a bible verse or story?

I have now come to believe that the very act of placing children in Sunday school classes has a negative chain reaction. Hitler went to Sunday school. He knew the scriptures extremely well and used his biblical knowledge to deceive many Germans.

In the child's mind the teacher becomes the spiritual authority because the teacher is the one who tells them about Jesus and other truths. They go to a place, a Sunday school class, a place of spiritual things. And parents are deceived by not knowing this shift has taken place in the mind(s) of their children. The danger is that when parents need to be the spiritual authority they are not seen as that.

Why are so many children growing up to leave the church? How sad when children grow to become youth and through these growing years have never experience what it means to worship as families with other families. I know children and youth who have never partaken of communion when they graduate from high school. I know parents who blame youth pastors for their wayward son or daughter. I have parents say, "My teen is drifting from Jesus, we better get a new youth pastor". Youth pastors are given a burden they don't deserve. Parents are deceived into believing they have the right to blame others for something they have failed to do themselves.

While many will argue with me, what if I am right in these matters? Are you willing to risk it? What we have thought to be a good thing has been proven to be deception.