We are in the process of adjusting our Primary Church program and I have been looking for some better curriculum that more directly deals with text of Scripture and that is preferably self-contained lessons (in other words, one lesson is not necessarily dependent upon another lesson) and preferably chronological in its approach to the lessons.
I have looked at the places I would normally look for curriculum and have been, um, underwhelmed. So, I decided tonight to give the internet a try. Wow. My second site I came to was this site which claimed that you could prepare your Sunday School lesson in 5 minutes - and it showed.
From the "Sample Lesson" on Noah's ark:
"use the bible but translate the bible story into a simple language that the little ones can understand - dwelling more on the ark and rainbow rather than the reasons for the flood and the fact that no-one else was saved."
In the two prayers in the lesson, both of them omit the name of Christ.
When you look at all of the other age groups for this same sample lesson, you will find the same glaring omissions - no mention of the reason for the flood and no mention of Christ. (In fact, in the older ages, the curriculum goes out of its way to avoid the sinfulness that led to the flood by having the children read Genesis 6:13-6:22, but skipping over the entire section that explains WHY God sent judgment.
May God save His church from such Sunday School lessons.
Just my thoughts,
Frank
3 comments:
Have you considered Regular Baptist Press?
Jim,
We are currently using RBP in both Sunday School and Jr. Church (although our Jr. Church is really primary church up to 3rd grade).
We used to use the Sunday School curriculum in Jr. Church because we did not have Sunday School until we got into our new building last year. When we started Sunday School, we used the SS curriculum for SS and started using the Jr. Church stuff for Jr. Church.
The problem is that the units are four-week units and are so interrelated as to not make much sense if you miss a week. In addition, one week the topic of the lesson was a fictional lamb. (I am sure in the weeks around it, they probably tried to connect that to something, but not in the particular lesson.) Since we have a number of kids that are hit and miss for various reasons (such as home life), I would like the content to be such that each lesson is a lesson by itself. (Not saying that it can't relate to previous and past lessons, but that if someone is there only one week they still get Biblical content with Biblical application.)
Thank you for the suggestion. I may see if they have something else besides the Jr. Church stuff that we already have.
Frank
I agree. The "happy stories" in the Bible are meaningless apart from the hard realities such as sin and judgment. I don't think kids are ever to young to hear the "whole council of God"
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