Why Dropping Sunday School Could Save the Soul of Your Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(Excerpted from: Sunday Schooling Our Kids Out of Church! The True Story of How One Congregation Dropped Sunday School to Save its Soul) The latest\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/timwright\/2015\/11\/why-dropping-sunday-school-could-save-the-soul-of-your-church\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Dropping Sunday School Could Save the Soul of Your Church\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(Excerpted from: Sunday Schooling Our Kids Out of Church! 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{"id":1114,"date":"2015-11-10T19:56:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T02:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/searchingfortomsawyer\/?p=644"},"modified":"2015-11-10T19:56:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T02:56:39","slug":"why-dropping-sunday-school-could-save-the-soul-of-your-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/timwright\/2015\/11\/why-dropping-sunday-school-could-save-the-soul-of-your-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Dropping Sunday School Could Save the Soul of Your Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

(Excerpted from: Sunday Schooling Our Kids Out of Church! The True Story of How One Congregation Dropped Sunday School to Save its Soul)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The latest statistics paint a disturbing picture of faith trends in the U.S. Although 70% of the country still claims to be Christian, the numbers of those identifying with Christianity are dropping (an 8% drop since 2007), while those identifying as \u201cnone\u201d in terms of religious faith are growing.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Nones Are Coming! The Nones Are Coming! $\"empty-cathedral-1230862\"$ <\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Several reasons account for this decline in the numbers of those affiliating with Christianity:<\/p>\n

\n
Scandals within the Catholic Church<\/li>\n
The scandals of several high profile pastors<\/li>\n
The overall skepticism toward institutions in the U.S.<\/li>\n
The perception that Christianity is no longer relevant<\/li>\n
The hurt and pain inflicted on people by dysfunctional congregations<\/li>\n
The greater and instant access to other religions and philosophies of life. (One writer traces the decline of Christianity in the U.S. to the advent of the Internet!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A common phrase within Christian circles helps shed some light on another reason for the decline\u2014which is also the subject of this story about our congregation: Christianity is one generation away from extinction. <\/em>Christianity \u201csurvives\u201d not only through conversions but also in large part as faith is passed down from generation to generation; from families to families; from households to households.<\/p>\n
Could it be that we have stopped this generational passing down of the faith dead in its tracks\u2014by removing faith-formation from the home and by removing our kids and youth from worship?<\/em><\/p>\n
While we are busy trying to figure out how to get the Millennials back in our pews, we have the eyes of an entire generation looking to us to keep them in the pews. They haven\u2019t decided yet that church is too showy or too traditional. They don\u2019t know the difference between being seeker-friendly or missional. They have no idea what liturgy,<\/em>sacraments, theology and denominations are and they are not likely to critique whether or not the music is too loud, too upbeat, to slow, or too quiet. They are looking to us for one thing\u2014they want to be seen, they want to be loved, they want to belong. <\/em>\u2013Christina Embree<\/a>.<\/p>\n
After a 40-plus-year shift from families worshipping together to sending kids and youth off to their own Sunday events while the adults worship in the main worship center, the result is the most unchurched generation in the history of our country.<\/p>\n
Do you want to know (one of the reasons) why millennials aren\u2019t attending your church? Here goes\u2026Millennials aren\u2019t attending your church because they\u2019ve never had to attend your church. Think about it. From the time my generation was born we were thrown into nurseries with other babies. Then we went to children\u2019s ministries to be entertained while our parents went to \u201cbig church.\u201d Then we had middle school ministry. Then we had youth group. Then we went away to college and found a church with a stellar college ministry. It wasn\u2019t until we graduated college that we were expected to be a part of the intergenerational community called \u201cchurch.\u201d We\u2019d been segregated by\u00a0<\/em>age for the first 22 years. And you not only allowed this. You encouraged it.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
Admittedly, there are many reasons why each generation in our culture is increasingly distanced from the church. Some have to do with societal shifts that have nothing to do with the church. Some have to do with the inability of the church to articulate the Gospel in compelling ways.<\/p>\n
But perhaps one of the reasons has to do with the Sunday School shift\u2026as we shifted kids out of the main worship experience, enculturated them in their own program, and robbed them of any touch points with the rest of the body of Christ.<\/p>\n
Another way of saying it: by segregating our kids out of worship, we never assimilated them into the life of the congregation. <\/em>They had no contact points. They had no experience. They had no connection with the main worship service\u2014its liturgy, its music, its space, its environment, and its adults. It was a foreign place to them. As a result\u2026once they finished with the kids\/or youth program, they left the church. As one person put it in a comment on one of my blog posts, quoting and responding to a comment she heard from a young person: \u201cIf the church doesn\u2019t love me, then God must not either.\u201d\u00a0To her, the congregation had made it clear that children and teens weren\u2019t welcome and she took that as a stand-in for rejection by God.<\/em><\/p>\n
With good intentions we attempted to raise kids to be Christians, but we didn\u2019t raise them to be Churched Christians<\/em>. And perhaps that, in part, is why so few of them attend a church today. We\u2019ve essentially \u201cSunday-Schooled\u201d them out of church\u2014because we never assimilated them into church.<\/em><\/p>\n
Could it be that going back to the future\u2014bringing kids and youth back into big people worship\u2014could save the souls of our congregations?<\/p>\n
(Excerpted from: Sunday Schooling Our Kids Out of Church! The True Story of How One Congregation Dropped Sunday School to Save its Soul)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Excerpted from: Sunday Schooling Our Kids Out of Church! The True Story of How One Congregation Dropped Sunday School to Save its Soul) The latest statistics paint a disturbing picture of faith trends in the U.S. Although 70% of the country still claims to be Christian, the numbers of those identifying with Christianity are dropping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1621,"featured_media":773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[4,9,53,23],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-sunday-school","tag-church-2","tag-searching-for-tom-sawyer","tag-sunday-school","tag-tim-wright"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Dropping Sunday School Could Save the Soul of Your Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(Excerpted from: Sunday Schooling Our Kids Out of Church! 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