Writing in his blog TruePravda, Jared Bridges notes the problem of watered-down Sunday School curricula. Jared makes excellent points about how the language in Sunday School programs often is stripped of its theological content to make it “kid friendly.” It reminds me of my 4th grade Sunday School teacher, who had a very hard time explaining the incident in 1 Sam. 18 in which David brought two hundred foreskins of defeated Philistine soldiers to Saul. They didn’t have flannel-graphs for that.
Seriously, I wonder whether the whole concept of “Sunday School” has run its course. Perhaps age-regimented classes run by volunteers isn’t the best way to deliver theological training to our kids, particularly when most volunteers these days aren’t highly theologically-literate. Maybe we Evangelicals need to think more along the lines of a catechistic model, in which historic Christian creeds are studied, leading up to a time of “confirmation” that the catechumen has learned them