Is Sunday School Biblical?
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James M. Frye
All scripture
quotations are taken from the Authorized King James Bible. Any deviations are
not intentional. All underlines, bold and words within brackets are the
author's.
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Many people are not
aware of this, but Sunday school is a tradition and doctrine of men (Mark 7:7) which
was invented by a man named Robert Raikes in 1780. For the first 1700 of
Christian churches did not have “Sunday school”, not having found such a practice
in the Bible. Here are some of the main problems with Sunday school.
First, let me point
out that I do not have a problem with churches who take additional time beyond
the Sunday morning meeting for educational purposes. Churches should teach
their people as much as possible. Although, the reason that this time is
required in many/most churches, is because Sunday morning has been taken up
with witnessing to the lost. The bringing of "witnessing"
(evangelism) into the church is another error common today in many churches.
Many Christians instead of going out and witnessing to the lost as is the
biblical pattern (Acts 8:4), simply invite people to
church for the pastor to tell them how to be saved. Because of this, the time
that should have been used to teach and train believers (Matt 28:20, Eph.
4:11-14) is instead taken up with witnessing.
After all, how can a
pastor not witness to the unbelievers that have been placed before him. So people do one thing in an unbiblical way (bring
evangelism into the church), and then must create another unbiblical program
(Sunday school) in order to solve the problem (lack of teaching time). But they
themselves have created the problem by not following the biblical pattern in
the first place. It is almost as if man thinks that he can create a better way
of doing things than that which was given to us as an example by the Holy
Spirit in Scripture. On second thought it is not ALMOST that, it is that.
Churches are to
teach their people to witness on their own outside of the church. If they get a
convert, they should then baptize them and bring them to church. Search the
scriptures and you will find this to be the biblical pattern [Matt 28:18-20,
Acts (all of it), etc.]. By eliminating man-made practice number 1, we do not
then need man made practice number 2. In other words, by eliminating the error
of bringing evangelism into the church, we do not need to create the man-made
solution for the lack of teaching in the church - “Sunday school". Pastors
need to train their people (Eph. 4:11-14) that every Christian is a minister
and has a ministry, and that a main part of the ministry is the responsibility
to witness (2 Cor. 5:17-21).
Second, Sunday school
removes the teaching of the congregation from the pastors to whom Christ gave
it (Eph. 4:10-11) and gives it to teachers (who are usually far less qualified)
to whom Christ did not give it. I have known a number of people who have been
Sunday school teachers and most of them didn't know enough sound Bible doctrine
to be more than dangerous. As a matter of fact, many of them were entirely
clueless. What is the excuse for doing these things especially when Scripture
clearly teaches otherwise - man knows better than God? Instead of splitting the
time in half and having 45 minutes for Sunday school and 45 minutes for
preaching, why not give the pastors the entire time (the full hour and a half)
to preach and teach the word of God?
Third, I have a
problem with segregating the congregation by age for teaching purposes. You
will not find any such thing being done in either testament. We only find one
proposal for doing so in Scripture (Mark 10:13-14) and it was quickly put down
by Jesus. Jesus, along with every other teacher in scripture, taught the people
together as one group made up of all ages. If God wanted us to do things
differently, why would He give us the opposite example? Jesus had many women
who traveled with him and helped him (Luke 8:2-3). Why did He not appoint them
all as Sunday school teachers and ship the children off to them? Because he did
not want things to be done in that fashion (Mark 10:13-14), that's why.
Fourth, Scripture
places the responsibility for training the children upon the parents (Deut. 6,
Eph. 6), and not upon the church. Isn't it interesting that Scripture tells us
that it was given to us to show us how to do things perfectly (2 Tim 3:16-17)
in the church, yet there is not one instruction given to teach children. The
idea that we need to come up with our own inventions in the church strikes at
the very heart of the Biblical teaching on the sufficiency of Scripture. Did
God give us a handbook for doing things in the church and then forget and leave
something out? Is the Bible flawed? Is it lacking something that needs to be
added by men? Does it fail to tell us all that we need to do in order to please
God and do things the way he wants us to? God forbid!
The whole thing
comes down to a matter of men thinking that they know better than God how to do
things in His church. They may not see it as such, but that is the problem. All
too many people have a very low valuation of the pattern and example (1 Cor.
4:16, 11:1; 2 Thess. 2:15; Phil 3:17; 1 Tim 3:15; etc.) of Scripture. There is
a pattern laid down for us in Scripture as to how things are to be done in the
church. God laid that pattern down for a reason and expects us to follow
it.
It is interesting
that for the first nearly 1800 years of Christianity churches did not have
Sunday school. During that time no one ever got such an idea out of reading
God's instructions in Scripture. Since that time people have come up with all
sorts of man-made practices and programs in the church. And look at what has
happened to Christianity. It is an apostate mess. We need to get back to the
purity of doctrine and practice of the early church, and drop all of the
inventions of men. God's way is best.
For more on why our
church practices are to be limited to those authorized by scripture, please
read my article on that subject at the link below.
http://www.seekingfortruth.com/articles/regprinc.htm