Why Adult Sunday School Can Hurt the Church

Now, before you start throwing rocks the size and shape of your LifeWay quarterly, hear me out. Having grown up in churches with Sunday School, and now pastoring a church that doesn’t have a traditional Sunday School, I feel I can write this post openly and honestly. Hear me: every church needs to have some type of small group ministry. Community happens in circles, not rows.

But the most common form of small groups, adult Sunday School, can actually be harmful to the church. Here’s why: in a traditional church setting, a committed member will give you two hours on Sunday morning: one hour for worship and one hour for small group. Where’s the problem? For a church to operate at a high level, you actually need three hours of commitment from your members: one hour for worship, one hour for small group, and one hour for service. A church will only be as successful as her volunteers.

Here’s where adult Sunday School can hurt your church: worship is non-negotiable, leaving church members to choose between small group or serving on a Sunday morning. For your Sunday School to be successful, your age-graded ministries will suffer when it comes to quality volunteers. All your top notch volunteers are locked up in Sunday School, leaving you with either poor volunteers or no volunteers.

The solution? Change. If you haven’t stopped reading yet, you might now. What Mt Vernon did was what many churches are beginning to do: move adult small groups away from Sunday mornings. Our LifeGroups meet at different times at different places: Sunday evenings, weeknights, and even a few that still meet Sunday morning. To not over schedule our people, we also took something away: traditional Sunday night church (replaced by LifeGroups). By moving the bulk of our adult small groups off Sunday mornings, we’ve created a culture where the majority of our members serves and attends worship on Sunday morning. The result? We have top-notch volunteers in all of our age-graded ministries. We have more than enough volunteers to create a welcoming environment through our Host Team. The entire Sunday morning experience goes to another level.

I’m not saying that this change is easy, but I firmly believe it’s the future.