What No One Tells a New Sunday School Teacher

When you were first handed a teacher's manual, did anyone say this to you? "Be careful. While this is the best curriculum we've found, there may be errors in it." 

Choosing a curriculum is important, but an even greater responsibility lies with those of us who use it. We are the ones who will be held accountable for what we teach. A teacher who is willing to study first from the Bible and then look at the teacher's manual will be able to overcome a less-than-perfect curriculum. 

When you use a curriculum or create your own lesson from scratch, these six points will help you teach a lesson that correctly reflects biblical truth.

1. God is the central character of every lesson. We use drama, excitement, and emotion when we tell the story of David and Goliath. That's good. But who comes out looking like the hero? Is it David? Or is it God? David was clear when he charged the giant. "I come in the name of the Lord." We need to ensure that our students understand that it was not David's courage or his abilities that won over the Philistines that day, but God who enabled Him. If we stop to think of how many things could have gone wrong that day, we will have a better understanding of David's confidence in God. We need to paint a picture of God's abilities with such admiration that there is no doubt Who won the victory for the Israelites.   
2. Subpoints should not take center stage. The story of the feeding of the 5,000 is not a lesson about sharing, but a lesson on Jesus' power. It should fill us with amazement and wonder at how great He is. God may choose to use that lesson to encourage a child to share, but our emphasis as teachers needs to be on Jesus, not the boy who doesn't even get mentioned in some of the gospels' narratives of this event. 
   
3. My emphasis needs to be on spiritual change, not good behavior. Many children understand the need for grace when they initially ask God to forgive them of their sins and to include them in His family. Too few realize that they still need grace in order to grow and live the Christian life. Sometimes it's easy for them to believe that they are accepted by God because of their good behavior. If we do not continually encourage a dependence upon God's grace as they grow in their walk with God,  they may come to believe that their own self-discipline and obedience are making them pleasing to God. This can lead to Phariseeism and legalism. 
4. I waste time if my activities do not aid in teaching the central truths of the day. Activities and games are valuable teaching tools, especially for children. We should employ a great variety of teaching methods. But with every activity, we need to ask some simple questions. How will this help the students grow? Will it increase their understanding? Will it help them apply today's main truth? If I include this activity, will they be more or less likely to remember and apply today's truths?  Will they walk away from my class more excited about God or will they only remember the game? We have so little time with our class. Let's not waste one minute of it on activities that do not help to drive home the main point.
5. I need to be thorough in my lesson preparation? Lesson manuals are wonderful aids for teachers, but they do not replace the study of the Word of God. As teachers of the Bible, we start our lesson preparation with our text, the Bible. We do our best to ensure that we understand the lesson thoroughly ourselves before we try to teach it to others. This requires preparation throughout the week. Some truths are hard for us to understand, but rather than ignoring those truths, we need to spend time working to interpret them to our students. Once we feel we know what the Bible is teaching, then we pick up the manual to help us supplement what we've already learned.
6. Prayer is vital to my lesson preparation. Unless God does something in us and through our teaching, all our efforts will be in vain. As we begin to prepare, we ask God to teach us and help us to apply what we learn. We ask God to enable us to teach it in ways that our class will understand. We ask Him for attentive ears and receptive hearts. We ask Him to take His Word and apply it. We pray for the life situations that our students face. We entrust the our teaching time to Him, asking Him to use it to spread His fame in each of our lives.

God has given us a book.  That book is about Him.  We want to provide a solid foundation that will last a lifetime.

Are you one of those who was given a curriculum without any instructions on how to use it? Were you aware when you started teaching that you might find errors in it? Did you? I would love to hear your answers in the comments below.