UM campaign focuses on importance of Sunday school

United Methodist News Service
After the tragedy and terror of Sept. 11, 2001, a little girl in New Jersey found comfort in her Sunday school class. Someone taught her, “Jesus loves you, and everything will be all right.”
If you tell Harriett Olson, an executive with the United Methodist Publishing House, that Sunday school is “dead,” she will tell you the story about that little girl or one of the many other accounts she has collected in the past year since the launch of “Sunday School: It’s For Life.”
The joint campaign of the United Methodist Publishing House and General Board of Discipleship encourages congregations to see Sunday school as a tool to educate people for faithful living and nurture them on their spiritual journey.
“Sunday School: It’s for Life” was introduced at the 2004 General Conference.
Olson and Carol Krau, an executive with the General Board of Discipleship, have been attending conferences and gatherings since last May promoting the campaign.
“Sunday school means being in a life-giving relationship with God,” Krau said. “You find abundance in Sunday school. The world is based on never having enough, always feeling limited, but with God there is more than enough.”
On any average Sunday, about 1.6 million people are in Sunday school, Olson said. She described the campaign as a grass-roots movement to reclaim Sunday school for the power it has.
“Connecting to real life doesn’t necessarily happen when you sit down together, but it won’t happen if you don’t sit down together,” she said.
Sunday school helps people “connect their story with God’s,” Krau said. “It is important to be in a setting where you can have relationships with others,” she continued.
Both Olson and Krau admit that Sunday school works well in some places but not others. Olson cites reasons for Sunday school attendance declines:
> Quality is not consistent from place to place.
> Teachers need help.
> Congregations need more teachers.
> Plans for learning may be haphazard.
> Participants might not make the connection to their daily lives.
“Sunday school won’t maintain itself,” Olson said. “There must be a connection between faith and daily life.
“Wonderful things happen in Sunday school. Children hear the love of God; youths ask questions and build relationships with God and each other; adults build relationships and learn to hear God’s call and learn to love God in their daily lives.”
Mary Lou Pitzer, a member of St. Matthias UMC in Fredricksburg, Va., said, “I don’t know how you know the Bible if you don’t go to Sunday school.
“In Sunday school you meet people, hear about their families, hear the prayer chains and concerns about the community. You just feel a part of God’s work.”
Pitzer hasn’t missed Sunday school in 51 years.