Last Sunday\u00c2\u00a0I had a ‘light-bulb’ moment.\u00c2\u00a0 My youngest son, who is 5 1\/2 years old, informed me Saturday night that he didn’t want to go to Sunday School because it was boring.\u00c2\u00a0 Upon further questioning I found out the only thing he likes about Sunday School is when they talk about God (he doesn’t like crafts or other activities).\u00c2\u00a0 So I decided to perform an experiment.\u00c2\u00a0 I suggested that he spend time with mom and we would read the Bible and talk about God instead of him going to Sunday School.\u00c2\u00a0 He thought it was a great idea.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0So Sunday morning I grabbed a Bible and we sat down.\u00c2\u00a0 He wanted to start at the beginning so we started with Genesis 1.\u00c2\u00a0 It was so much fun!\u00c2\u00a0 I loved challenging my 5 year old to think about <\/em>what we were reading.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, even though God created light on the 1st day, he didn’t create the sun until the 4th day.\u00c2\u00a0 So where did the light come from?\u00c2\u00a0 It was awesome to see the wheels turning – he thought it came from the houses, but when I said there were no houses or light bulbs, he was stumped.\u00c2\u00a0 So we went to the back of the book (Revelation) to find out that at the end there will be no need for the sun because God will shine on them.\u00c2\u00a0 So our theory is that the light came from God at the very beginning.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0Matthew wanted to keep going on and on and we’d already spent at least 45 minutes just reading the Bible and talking about it.\u00c2\u00a0 And all day afterwards Matthew could not stop talking about how much he loved his ‘M Study’ (Mom and Matthew study).\u00c2\u00a0 He couldn’t wait until we did it again.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0I was amazed.\u00c2\u00a0 It was such a simple thing, to read the Bible and talk about it, and Matthew loved it so much.\u00c2\u00a0 I began to wonder – if kids love this kind of stuff with their parents – what is the point of Sunday School?\u00c2\u00a0 My oldest son is the same way – he loves Bible study with dad; he hates going to Sunday school.<\/p>\n So I have a few questions milling around my mind: 1) if kids hate going to Sunday school, why do we make them go?\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve heard the arguement that it is important for them to go, so you have to make them go even if they don’t want to be there.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you are constantly dragging your child off to something he doesn’t like for\u00c2\u00a0all his life, when he finally is old enough to decide whether to go to church or not, what makes us think he’ll suddenly want to go?\u00c2\u00a0 And why is it important to go to Sunday school anyway?\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve heard it stressed that parents need to be discipling their children.\u00c2\u00a0 If parents are doing that, why bother with Sunday school?\u00c2\u00a0 Or is it just something to fill up time during the sermon?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 2) Why do we force kids to attend something they don’t like instead of asking WHY they don’t like it?\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than trying to make children fit ‘our’ mold, why aren’t we asking what they would like to do?<\/p>\n There’s another thing I want to note: even though I’ve heard it stressed that it is important for parents to disciple their kids, how much are we actually held accountable for that?\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t hear people asking me if I’m discipling my children, but I do get asked if my child was in Sunday school.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a different message being communicated:\u00c2\u00a0Sunday school is more important than personal discipleship.<\/p>\n I know Sunday school did not originate in the early church.\u00c2\u00a0 So where did it come from?\u00c2\u00a0 And why?\u00c2\u00a0 Is it still applicable for today?\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll post more as I find out more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last Sunday\u00c2\u00a0I had a ‘light-bulb’ moment.\u00c2\u00a0 My youngest son, who is 5 1\/2 years old, informed me Saturday night that he didn’t want to go […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}