Well mine sure did. I will tell you why too - "lack of vision." Or to put it another lack of my involvement.
If Sunday School for you was for like it was for me - then you were not there and had no idea what was going on. All you knew was that you need to find teachers, material, and then stir. I just wasn't there and that was not good. The fact that I might have called SS lame was not because of my teachers or the material it was because my focus was on Sunday Night and Wednesday Night programs and Sunday morning was not even on my radar. This was not good.
Sunday Morning is definitely on my radar now b/c by conviction of the Holy Spirit and some other mentors, I have come to realize that Sunday Morning is the front door to student/youth ministry. Yes we are reformed, yes we are covenantal, therefore, yes, Sunday morning is the most important time for worship and outreach because that is when your new families are coming to visit. Sunday morning is going to be their first impression of your church.
So what did we do? "What should I do?" you may be asking.
1) Vision: You have to recast the vision for Sunday morning. You must ask, "What is the purpose of Sunday morning? What do I want Sunday morning to look like? How can we make it better? Am I involved? Who is coming?" I know this is a lot to think about but it is important. We live in the 21st century and the traditional Sunday School model is probably not the best. O, BTW, SS is not mandated in the Bible - yes I said that.
2) Name: Consider renaming the Sunday School hour. Do all your other programs have different, cool names and your Sunday School hour is still called Sunday School? Well ours did and boy doesn't Sunday School have a sound that gets you excited. Simply changing the name could be huge.
3) Discipleship: Decide what the purpose in the path of discipleship is in all your other programs and see what's missing. When you find what's missing, let's say worship, then trying making worship a key element in the program.
4) Format: If your program is still called Sunday School then I bet you have 45 minutes of teaching (hard core I might add) and 15 minutes of prayer. Think about it, they are about to go get a sermon from the guy who is most skilled and teaching the Bible, your Sr. Pastor. So don't make them listen to 2 in a row and they will also probably get another one that night. Consider adding in more fellowship time, music, maybe even try something edgy. We are trying a new, edgy format. We are using more audio/visual stimulation to reach this xbox 360/iPod world. We are using a DVD series called Nooma that are 10-14 minutes teaching parables and then having discussion afterwards - so far so good and nobody has gone to sleep yet. I will let you know more about it later.
5) Change: If is lame - change it. Remember you are the problem that it is lame and you need to do something about it. Pray about it, then change it and don't be afraid. If it is Christ-centered and well thought out then it will go over great with every one.
After our change we had the largest Sunday morning attendance ever.
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