Designing a Beautiful Sunday School Curriculum
Even if you have orange carpet on the walls
“Moses and David didn’t just want to see beauty. They wanted to see God. They knew there was no greater beauty to see.” — Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind
My experience with Sunday School began when I was 18 years-old and a brand new Christian. My pastor asked me to step in as an assistant in the preschool class. I sat there as wide eyed as those 4 year-olds watching the teacher place pictures on the sky blue flannelgraph board and I was utterly amazed at how much more these little kids knew about the Bible than I did. Even the Jesus Loves Me song was completely new. Since then I have been involved in many different children’s ministries: summer camp, Backyard Bible Clubs, Wednesday night programs, Vacation Bible School, youth group, Sunday Schools with full-fledged purchased curriculum and other situations where you just have to cobble something together from dusty coloring books and internet print-outs. There are children that I taught who are now out there walking around in the world as full grown adults with beards. I do not know how any of this could be true, but it is.
A few years ago our town’s two small Baptist churches combined and my husband asked me to consider how we could provide intentional care and support to the children’s ministry that we inherited with the merge (when I say small churches, I mean so small that for many years the only children’s ministry we had was our own family). Could it be possible to make a curriculum on our own that would enable us to not have to purchase expensive materials, that would support the overall discipleship vision of the church, that would not burn out volunteers, and could it just be simple and beautiful?
What resulted is not perfect and I am continually refining, but I do believe we have something unique and meaningful to offer. And I don’t mean to say that other curriculum out there is not meaningful because there are some truly magnificently well done gospel-centered materials that you can buy, but what I mean is that even a very small church with very limited resources is fully equipped to include children into its life. Worshiping, hearing God’s word directly and meditating on it, telling it to others, responding to it, singing spiritual songs, praying and bearing one another’s burdens. This is the good stuff of church life and we can give that to our children.
Here is what it looks like for us:
We seek to use our classroom time as a beautiful hour with direct access to God’s Word and opportunities to learn and worship through:
1) Singing great hymns of the faith in order to learn rich and comforting doctrine by heart. Hymns teach truths about God, plant seeds of faith in our hearts, allow us to express ourselves in song as we worship, edify and build one another up, unite us as a church and to other believers in history, encourage us in times of sorrow, and expose us to beauty and poetry.
2) Memorizing and Reciting longer passages of scripture such as entire Psalms or Jesus’ parables. Reciting scripture helps us slow down, ponder, and wonder. The Holy Spirit can use these words to correct and comfort us. We may not fully memorize these passages perfectly, but the far greater goal is to create a habit of meditating on God’s word so that its truths can sink down deep.
3) Prayer. We take our requests for ourselves and others to God and we enjoy fellowship with him. We pray about everything from new kittens and basketball games to those suffering with cancer and for unbelieving friends at school. We rehearse the good news of the gospel and thank God for his attributes and blessings. Through prayer we live out our trust in him, that we know he hears us and will help us.
4) Hearing the Bible text read directly and then responding to what they hear through telling back. The teacher reads from the Bible and the students do the work of telling back what it says. Telling back can happen in many different ways such as telling the teacher what happened or what they noticed from the passage but they can also act out the story, draw a picture and explain it, or make a picture for the classroom timeline.
This element may strike some as strange. Often, curriculum will instead give a script for the teacher of a retelling of the passage and will even provide the explanation and application in the same breath. I am actually not opposed to doing this, but what we are doing here is different.
We are communicating something really important in discipleship: that children are responsible for what they hear, that they are capable of understanding the Bible, that talking about it in community is normal and everyone’s voice matters, that they have to pay attention and digest these words because they are for us-- for all of us. A six year-old may initially only be able to tell you that “Jesus was kind” from the story, but that’s a pretty great takeaway and perhaps just what the Holy Spirit had for her to hear.
One of the greatest gifts I received from using Jen Wilkin’s women’s Bible studies over the years is her explanation that dwelling in the unknown and having to summarize a passage before reading any commentary are the biggest study tools you can have. When you know that the teacher isn’t going to give you the answer right away and you have to think about it yourself, your brain is so much more engaged and ready to learn and make that text your own forever. This is the gift we can give our kids too.
5) Looking at great works of art that correspond to the Bible passage read. This aids in deeper reflection and memory of the passage. This is everyone’s favorite part. The teacher holds up an art print and gives a full minute of silence for everyone to look at it closely. Then the print is placed face down and the students are asked to tell back about the work of art. The littlest ones can give a full description of the expressions, the colors, the lighting, the dog hiding in the corner, and if it’s about the apostle Peter then there are sure to be keys lying around. Some students even begin to pick up on the style and will guess the artist. Then the teacher will give the artist’s name and maybe a few interesting facts about it. The teacher is careful to mention that this is what the artist imagined in their mind when they read the same passage and this communicates that people in history knew these stories too and they thought they were important enough to create something so wonderful. I also suspect that this practice can train children to meditate, to sit in silence, to wonder, and to notice symbolism and themes.
6) Using their hands to learn a new skill that can serve others. Children have an eagerness to do meaningful things with their hands and they love to do these “grown-up” crafts. They spend roughly 6 to 12 weeks to learn something fairly difficult so that they can give a beautiful and useful finished project away to encourage someone else. We have made terracotta clay bowls, macrame plant holders with decorated potted plants, calligraphy verse art, loom weaving wall hangings, beaded wind chimes, soap carved animals, marbled paper, bookmarks, and watercolor paintings made with real techniques. We also have a card ministry where we regularly set aside time to make cards for those who are suffering.
7) And finally being challenged and encouraged in their faith during a read aloud time. We spend the last ten minutes of class listening to a classic such as Pilgrim’s Progress or a longer missionary biography that can take the whole school year to finish. I try to find biographies that are not hero worship or idealized pictures of the Christian life, but ones that show the very real challenges of navigating illnesses, loneliness, difficult personalities, war, not having support, years of not seeing fruit, and yet where God’s work and faithfulness are so clearly displayed. Hearing such stories from the past serves as a cloud of witnesses and give us a hope-filled footing on our own pilgrim paths.
Does all of this work? I would say absolutely yes, but it’s also not quite the question I want to be asking. Anyone promising instant and spectacular results are usually selling something. The children in our ministry seem to love each element and look forward to coming to class. They have wonderful insights and listen attentively. They make connections in the text that make me marvel. But like most things in church life and discipleship, it’s a slow and steady, patiently hoping experience. We are just planting seeds and sharing good news. Again, it’s a gift. God will bring the harvest.
If you would like to see the art prints and plan that we will use this coming year you can access the pdfs below. I will share more practical explanations for how to put this together in a future post.
Thank you for reading and bearing with me as I learn how to use Substack!
This is so stunning!! Thank you so much for sharing this richness! Is there any way to access Years 1-2 as well?
Thank you for this! Such a wonderful overview!