Missing Sunday School.

Dear Sunday School,

Wow, where do I even begin? It’s been so long since we last talked. Fifteen years at least. I used to go see you in college on the Sundays I would go to church. There you were, faithful and true. No jumping around during the week for you. Like an old friend, you were always waiting for me in the same spot each week. At church, spooning right up against the service.

I could double dip.

I could knock out both at once. Church and Sunday School were the perfect team, like chocolate and peanut butter, frog and toad, Kim Kardashian and a professional athlete/Kanye.

Ahh, see that last joke was unnecessary. That was more The Soup and less the SCL. I probably wouldn’t have even made it if you were still around. But you’ve been gone for a while now.

We collectively decided you were old-fashioned. We felt like you were too restrictive, too old-school, the bad kind of old-school, not the good kind, like the neon colors that have zombie-crawled their way back from the 80s and are dominating the planet right now.

These days, we don’t want you, Sunday School.

We want to do life together.

To go through some seasons.

To form a community of communities that fellowship.

So we traded you in for small groups and home groups and connect groups and journey groups. We moved you to Tuesday night or every third Wednesday night or the fourth Thursday night divided by 14 with no remainder carried over. Now when I go see you, I have to find a babysitter. And a couch from IKEA and a plate of Costco one bite brownies for everyone that comes over.

And I love small groups. I think they’re awesome. In addition to forming some great friendships, if it doesn’t work out, you can trade in your group for a new one. That was hard with you Sunday School. If things didn’t work out, I didn’t have a whole lot of options. I couldn’t dump you, knowing that every Sunday morning I’d see you waiting for me right outside of church. But with a small group, I’m free to move around.

Let’s say the leader of my next group inexplicably owns a komodo dragon. And I don’t like komodo dragons. I’m more of a gila monster man. My daddy was a gila monster man. His daddy was a gila monster man. That’s just how I was raised. Well, I can just change groups.

But even though I like small groups, the more I think about it, the more I realize I miss you. I miss having the double feature of Sunday School and Church. I know it still exists. It’s still available at a ton of different churches. But, for 15 years, I haven’t seen you at the churches I attend.

Maybe we’ll run into each other at a potluck. We’ll shake hands, maybe talk about the old days. But then someone from my small group will come up, and I’ll have to leave you standing by a sad casserole, Sunday School.

It’s not you, it’s me.

Jon

Question:

Does your church have adult Sunday School?