Many of us have left Sunday School feeling spiritually underfed. Maybe the lesson went in a weird direction. Or maybe the lesson was fine, but your heart and spirit just didn’t feel spoken to.
So, what should we do if we feel consistently let down after Sunday School?
We spoke with Patrick and Melissa Mason, who coauthored the new book Rooted, which explores how we can all feel more deeply centered on the healing love of Jesus Christ at church.
The Masons shared a few ways we can make Sunday School a better, more Christ-centered experience.
Make Yourself More Available to Grace
When a lesson is falling flat, try thinking about how you can make yourself more available to grace in that moment.
Melissa says that while writing Rooted, she became “more available to all the ways that I encounter Christ in my daily life, all the places that He is already present.”
How can we make ourselves more available to God’s grace during Sunday School? Here are a few ideas:
- Commit to not using our phones in a distracting way
- Be attentive during the opening prayer
- Take notes
- Say something kind to someone in class
- Ponder questions asked by the teacher, even if you don’t answer them out loud
- Seek to have charitable thoughts toward those in the room
While God can reach us anywhere, Sunday School is what Patrick calls a “grace-maximizing” place. It is a space where we can feel illuminated, excited, or comforted by what we learn through the Spirit.
Our efforts to be available won’t guarantee we feel Christ’s grace during every class. But by simply showing up and striving to be present, we will open ourselves more to what God wants to give. In Rooted, Patrick writes:
“I can’t contain or predict grace. I’ve given up trying. What is magical one moment will be dead if I try it again. … But I’ve learned that there are certain things I can do, certain places I can go (mentally or physically), that maximize my opportunity to encounter grace. It’s not a guarantee. Most times grace remains a low hum in the background. But instead of one time out of a hundred, maybe in those spaces of maximized opportunity, discernible grace will find me five times out of a hundred. I’ll take those odds.
“Church is one of those grace-maximizing places for me.”
Be Real Participants, Not Parrots
We will get more out of Sunday School when we realize that participating means more than raising our hands.
“Christ wasn’t looking for parrots, for people to repeat stuff or give rote answers,” Melissa says. “He was looking for people who wanted to participate. And when we participate—like really fully with each other—… that’s where [Sunday School] really comes alive.”
That kind of full participation can include joining in the discussion to share our perspectives. But it also includes how we hold ourselves. How we talk to each other before and after the lesson. How we listen with love. Our determination to stay present. What we notice about other people in the room.
“To be Christ-centered isn’t to say Christ a million times in a meeting,” Melissa says. “It’s actually a way of being—a way of being present and embodying Christ so that [His] way illuminates and informs ... the way we are and [the way we] interact with each other.”
Focus On Christ, Not Content
Lastly, Sunday School comes alive when we focus on Christ, not content.
“The minute that we think of Sunday School … as content delivery, we’ve missed the mark,” Patrick says.
The purpose of Sunday School isn’t to give (or receive) a lesson on 2 Kings, for example. The true goal is to connect to Christ so that we can go out into the week feeling more spiritually alive. Patrick points out that John 15 teaches that if a branch isn’t connected to the vine, it’s lifeless. The branch could be used for other good things (such as a walking stick or for firewood), but it’s not alive, and it can’t bear fruit.
“I’ve sat in my share … of Sunday School lessons where I said interesting things or heard interesting things, where facts were delivered, where insights about scriptures were delivered, where good moral teaching was offered—but it wasn’t life-giving. Sometimes, it actually felt a bit dead,” Patrick says.
One way Melissa tries to keep Sunday School a spiritually nourishing experience for herself, no matter the lesson, is by pondering these two questions:
- What does this teach me about Christ?
- What does this teach me about myself?
The questions help her remember that in Sunday School, we are not trying to move toward scripture mastery. Instead, we are moving “toward an understanding of who we are and who Christ is—and how we commune and progress together.”
Connect every lesson back to Christ
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