Sunday School Marksmanship

Robert Raikes and Thomas Stock first established a Sunday school for the poor and orphaned in Gloucester in 1780. Although there were earlier Sunday schools, Raikes and Stock have become the recognized originators. The Sunday School is there to evangelize and educate kids, youth, and adults in the word of God. It is also there to Disciple of train the church of tomorrow. To accomplish this we need to be focused and prepared.

To be focused and prepared, each lesson needs to start with an objective. A clear objective of what you want to accomplish in a given session, series, or occasion is esential. Many times we teach without one and load our students with a lot of head knowledge without leading them down a clear direction.

This is as bad as a marksman that shoots a arrow in the air without a goal in site just hoping to appropriately hit something. This is both careless and dangerous.

When you are preparing your lessons think of the content of your lesson, think of the needs of your audience, and prayerfully develop an aim or goal that you want to accomplish in your annointed presentation. Write it out. You aim should be clear and concise and include what you wish your audience to achienve. An example is as follows:

                                       "to recognize their need for a Savious and invite Christ into their heart."

                                                        "to understand and practive charity in their daily lives."

                                            "to memorize the ten commandments and be able to recite them"
                                  
                                    "to understand the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and seek a personal infilling."

Once the objective and desired result has been determined, the whole lesson plan should then be focused around this clearly and succintly defined objective. This will also provide the teacher with a measurement device to evaluate their teaching:

                                            "Did my unsaved students invite Christ into their heart? How many?

                                             "How did my students indicate they could daily pracice charity?"

                                   "How many of my students memorized the ten commandments successfully?"

                                        "How many of my students have received the Baprism of the Holy Spirit, 
                                                                             and how many are still actively seeking?