Faith Works 6-22-19

Faith Works 6-22-19

Jeff Gill

 

Faith seeking understanding, in or out of church

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From Sunday school to Vacation Bible School (or VBS), Christians have had a deep commitment to education in this country's history.

 

The "Sunday school movement" began in England in the 1700s when young people were working in factories six days a week, and Sunday was the one day the church could help youth by teaching them basic literacy and general history, all through a Biblical lens.

 

When it came to this country in the early 1800s, public schools were common but not mandatory, and a Sunday school was still a vital option for youth education, if not a primary path for many.

 

By the early 1900s, education was legally required for all youth up to age 18 in places like Ohio, and into the 1920s and 1930s the shift to adult Sunday school meant there were a surprising number of churches where attendance at Sunday school was larger than worship attendance. In the move from the country to the city, adult Sunday school classes became an important place for networking and social support as well as a church entry point for new members. Nothing else was open Sunday mornings, and apparently from the numbers recorded, many grown-ups came to large class meetings, heard a lesson from a teacher, enjoyed some fellowship around the coffee urn, and then left, with sometimes as little as half that number staying for church services themselves.

 

As a youth experience, obviously the curriculum and approach of Sunday school changed after compulsory education became the norm. Now that kids were in school and learning reading, writing, and arithmetic five days a week, Sunday needed to strike a different chord. Faith formation became the core of the experience, teaching Bible content and religious understandings; weekday religious education was also a feature of many school districts for a few decades after World War II.

 

The Baby Boom after World War II, giving rise to the Boomer generation, meant that between 1950 and 1970 Sunday school classes were packed, and adult Sunday school slid back down in numbers; the attention churches gave reasonably shifted to creating a solid Sunday school program for the kids being born and then brought into church.

 

What hit many churches like a one-two punch was a decline in overall numbers just demographically, in the "baby bust" that followed the spike of births in the "baby boom" post-war; this natural trough in Sunday school attendance came right after many churches built education annexes to house the increased numbers . . . and as churches struggled to deal with changing from packed classrooms to empty hallways in the Seventies and Eighties, the culture shifted as well, with Sunday closing laws overturned and entertainment and activity options for youth increasing dramatically. For many churches, a relatively recently built "ed wing" suddenly sat largely empty, and active youth programs went dormant.

 

This was a standard arc for many "traditional" style churches; meanwhile, the rise of "contemporary" worship and new non-denominational churches in un-traditional spaces brought a new approach to youth programming which focused on events, activity, and energy. Rows of chairs and film strips gave way to multi-media and Christian rock as a way to attract and invite youth to explore their understandings around faith and practice.

 

Many of these "youth night" programs are large, and the size becomes an attraction as well; like the parallel experience in many communities with churches and overall worship participation, the total involvement decreases . . . in a manner of speaking, you go from ten churches each with twenty youth in a fellowship program (200 total) to two new churches with 60 at each of their programs, and the ten older churches have none or a couple of kids involved, so what looks like the new successful model still means a growing town has 120 or so involved in youth events, versus 200 years before when the community was smaller.

 

All of these changes and trends have impacted the youth camp and conference programs of most churches, and we'll talk about that experience in faith formation next week!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's learned much in church and not just about faith. Tell him what you've learned or taught at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.