College-age Sunday School

Chuck on September 2nd, 2008

There are churches on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to Sunday school – those that couldn’t imagine life in their church without it, and those that couldn’t live if they had it.  But, the question I’m interested in is does college-age Sunday School work?

I was recently teaching a seminar where people were asking me how they could go about getting more college-age people to attend.  They had been struggling with this for a long time and could never seem to get people to come.  Most of them knew of many college-age people in their church but were frustrated because they couldn’t get them to come to their Sunday school class.

I asked, “Why are you trying to get them to the Sunday School class?”  There were no direct answers.  It was as if they hadn’t thought about why it was that part was so important to them, beyond the fact that they had just always had it and Sunday School was one of the MAJOR elements to a Sunday morning in their church.  

I was fairly bold with them and said, “If you have a hard time getting them to come, maybe that tells you something about them, or possibly you and/or the way you’re going about that time.”  My heart wasn’t to bash them or this idea of Sunday School in ANY WAY!  What I was trying to get at is the heart behind it.  I had no doubt these people loved college-age people and desperately wanted to reach out to them.  I had no doubt that they were seriously praying and thinking through how they could engage their minds.  And, I could tell they really wanted to help.

But, if something’s not working…maybe there’s valid reasons.  Maybe Sunday School class isn’t the best way to engage them.  Maybe, just maybe, a Sunday morning breakfast at someone’s house at 11am is better.  Or, maybe the things they were discussing in the class just wasn’t pertinent to the lives of these people…?  

If you have trouble getting college-age people to come to your Sunday School – jump out of the box.  Drop it, and try something else.

If you are engaging people during these times…let us have it!  Clue us in to what’s working in our context!  Let all of us learn from what you’re doing.

If you’re the type of person that couldn’t imagine even having a Sunday School class for college-age people, why is that?  

This should be a fun discussion…

Related posts:

  1. why embrace college-age people?
  2. College Age People Do It Again…
  3. Christian School Environments
  4. churches that embrace college-age people
  5. College-age – as Adolescent Stage

Share Discuss (13)

Paul Pettefer at 10:06pm September 2

I’m the new College Minister at my church. My predecessor dropped sunday school in December, with the intent to start small groups, which he didn’t really get launched. I am a HUGE believer and participant in small group life (I love the Northpoint idea) and am launching groups for our College-Age-Stage right now.

We were supposed to start this week. I had about 26 of the 35-40 who came to our worship event during the Summer say they want to be in a Community Group…but Gustav put a week’s delay in our plans, and may even prevent me from coming to Drink tomorrow. (I’m part-time at church, and my businesses need to be restarted after the Hurricane, and that’s hard to pull off remotely. I’m torn…)

I’m not planning to start Sunday School back for College. Group Life is where it’s at!

paul pettefer

scottcarver at 9:13am August 17

great conversations! I have really enjoyed reading all of your experiences. It seems to me that one thing is clear: every context is different. Sunday school works great for some settings, in others it just “flops”. I’m in a setting where SS is really part of the culture and also you kill two birds with one stone. Our church sits right across the street from a Christian university, so there is no way to compete with all of their chapels, Bible studies, activities, etc….. Most students don’t have much time, so incorporating a gathering for college-age students just makes the most sense. That means they can come to church, attend a service and also gather together for study and fellowship. We do have a couple small groups which meet during the week, but we make these pretty informal. The majority of our students attend the SS group. It works for us. I think that is key- finding what works the best and then being consistent.