Changing the culture of a church is one of the most difficult things
for a pastor to do. But over the last decade our church has discovered
an unexpected tool for changing a culture: adult Sunday school.
HOW SUNDAY SCHOOL CHANGED OUR CHURCH’S CULTURE
Here’s an example. For some time, our elders were concerned that dating
in our church too closely resembled dating in the world. People dated
for fun, and only sometimes with an eye toward marriage. They treated
their roles interchangeably, failing to view their interactions as a
chance to prepare for the complementary roles of husband and wife. For
instance, men would not lead and shoulder the risk in relationships, but
instead sit back to see if a woman was interested before he put his
cards on the table. And of course many couples maintained cavalier
attitudes toward physical touch.
Periodically, several married men in the church conducted evening
seminars for single men and women in an effort to inject biblical
teaching into their thinking. And, while helpful, these seminars did not
accomplish the culture change that the elders desired.
Enter a Sunday school class on dating and marriage. The elders asked a
man in the congregation to prepare seven weeks of material on marriage
and six on dating. The first seven described the goal of marriage, while
the next six applied the principles discussed there to the process of
finding a spouse. This class has been repeated each year for ten years
now.
The class was controversial, especially at first. The questions became
so lengthy and involved that the leaders quickly decided to devote an
entire class to Q&A, and for several years they held an additional
Q&A session at an elder’s home on a weekday evening.
But today, the culture of dating in our congregation is markedly
different. Not all dating relationships in our church are conducted
according to biblical principles, but most of them are. And while only a
bare majority of our single members have taken the class, virtually all
of their conversations about dating are overshadowed by the content of
that class. Couples more naturally ask, “How can we make our
relationship more biblical?” Continue at Jamie Dunlop
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