Could Sunday School be Like a Gym?

There is a YMCA not far from my house and I have seen the different classes that are offered there. While Zumba or Hot Yoga are not my things these classes were more than well attended. It makes sense that in a gym people are brought together to learn more about a practice, to workout, build a community group, stretch, move and even reflect on the past week's decisions (eating too much sugar) that affect the current moment.

It sounds like what Sunday School should be. 

Sunday School is a reflection of the advent of the current classroom model that guides most public schools. There is a teacher, people sit in rows, the teacher has the knowledge, there may be some discussion but the class is expected to really only think about things and this thinking about things is thought to change behaviour in the week.

This model is not all bad. In fact it was Sunday School environment that educated many children to learn to read. Whatever good has come from the current model we the Church are indebted to it, however this model seems tired. 

I wonder what it would look like to reframe Sunday School less like a classroom and more like gym classes? 

There could be a class that practices meditation. There could be another class that practices Bible study. Another works on Theology. Another practices fellowship or accountability. Another that practices prayer in all sorts of ways while another Sunday School class might be focused on practicing silence and/or solitude. The class possibilites are endless and diverse. We are only limited by the courage of the people. 

I don't know how to reform the classroom Sunday School model into one that looks more like a gym. Perhaps I need to just create a new set of classes, call it Sunday School, but treat it like a gym - not a classroom.

Do you know when has the night ended and the day begun?

From the wisdom of the Jewish Tradition I offer up this story that I heard over the weekend:

A Rabbi once asked his students, “how do we know when the night has ended and the day has begun?” Immediately the students thought that they grasped the importance of the question. There are, after all, prayers that can be recited and rituals that can be performed only at night. And there are prayers and rituals that belong only to the day. It is therefore important to know when the night has ended and day has begun. So the brightest of the students offered an answer: “When I look out at the fields and I can distinguish between my field and the field of my neighbor’s, that’s when the night has ended and day has begun.” A second student offered her answer: “When I look from the fields and I see a house and I can tell that it’s my house and not the house of my neighbor, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.” A third student offered an answer: “When I can distinguish the animals in the yard – and I can tell a cow from a horse – that’s when the night has ended.” Each of these answers brought a sadder, more severe frown to the Rabbi’s face – until finally he shouted: “No! You don’t understand! You only know how to divide! You divide your house from the house of your neighbor, your field from your neighbor’s, one animal from another, one color from all the others. Is that all that we can do – divide, separate, split the world into pieces? Isn’t the world broken enough - split into enough fragments? No, my dear students, it’s not that way at all! Our Torah and Jewish values want more from us. The shocked students looked into the sad face of their Rabbi. One of them ventured, “Then Rabbi, tell us: How do we know that night has ended and day has begun?” The Rabbi stared back into the faces of his students and with a gentle voice responded: “When you look into the face of the person who is beside you and you can see that that person is your brother or your sister, when you can recognize that person as a friend, then, finally, the night has ended and the day has begun.” 

My our Lent be a season of unity and not further division.

We Yell When We Are Out of Practice

We have two boys, seven and two. Our eldest is like most other seven year olds, I imagine. He is able to express a wide range of emotions but there is a limit on his ability to put to words to the more complex emotions. While he has grown these years he has gotten much better and more comfortable at talking about his feelings. However, there are still times when he grows so frustrated because he cannot come up with the words and so he yells. My wife and I try to work with him to calm down and talk about what he is feeling in order to get him to practice talking about what is going on in his head. 

In our minds, this practice is essential in order to be a functioning human being. You cannot be an adult and just yell when you are frustrated or angry. You cannot just shut down and not talk about things that are important to you.

And yet, this is a problem with out time. Adults are in social settings and not talking about religion and politics. That is we are a bunch of adults who are not practicing talking about the things that are important to us. 

No wonder we have adults yelling about politics on the television and adults yelling about religion on the street corner and adults who are so turned off by all this yelling that they shut off the news and don't engage in religion. Bottom line, we are people who are biologically adults but we are like seven year olds - yelling or shutting down when we don't know how to express ourselves.

For all that evangelism is made out to be, it really is just faith sharing. It is practicing talking about religion and the things that matter. As the saying goes, if we want people to stop yelling all the time and talk about the things that matter, then we have to being with our own selves. We have to "be the change."