Dear Fellow Servant of the Word,
One of the many lessons we have learned as a result of the pandemic is the need to be flexible and to think about new ways of carrying out our ministries. It seems that what we know today is always different from what we thought we knew yesterday.
As the dust of the COVID shutdown settles, perhaps you are concerned about how you are going to reach your Sunday school students. Anecdotally, we have heard of congregations that are having trouble finding volunteers who are willing to teach. I suspect that some families may be reluctant to send their children to Sunday school in person. Yet these children need desperately to hear the only message that can provide a foundation for their lives through the assurance of forgiveness in Christ.
Just last week you may have seen an email that mentioned resources that you can provide for families so that the children in your congregation can learn of Jesus. NPH is working hard to produce a Christ-Light Remote Learning program for Sunday school.
The program will provide a YouTube video of a teacher teaching the lesson, and then transition to activity for kids and their parents on printed lesson sheets. This approach introduces two important benefits for families. First, those who are intimidated by teaching God’s Word, or who grew tired of “homeschooling” during the spring, need not be discouraged. They will only have to get the video going and then do a simple activity with the student at the end. The second possible benefit is that the parent will see the lesson being taught and will sit at the feet of Jesus along with their child. Families that may not often have spiritual discussions may now have those discussions on a more regular basis.
The YouTube videos will be available for free. For grades PreK-K, 1-2, and 3-4, the videos will be about 10-12 minutes long. Grade 5-6 will run about 25 minutes because lessons for this grade level are structured differently.
Because the videos are geared toward the activity for kids and their parents, it will be necessary for the students to have the lesson sheets. You might choose to distribute the lesson sheets in one of three ways:
- Purchase the student lessons, have them shipped to your church, and distribute them to families through a called worker or volunteer. An advantage of this method would be that you would have brief face-to-face contact and could have a home visit during which you could walk them through the program and stress the importance of parents teaching God’s Word to their children.
- Fill out this contact form, and we’ll call you back to discuss where you would like to ship the student lessons. On this form, be sure to let us know a convenient time for us to call you. NPH will ship the lessons directly to the families along with a description of the program.
- Send families a link to the NPH website and ask them to purchase the student lesson sheets.
As I compose this message, the sample lessons aren’t ready yet. We plan to have samples available on a dedicated web page by August 21. Visit nph.net/ss-remote for up-to-the-minute information. Though the lessons are designed for remote learning, at least one congregation is considering using them for face-to-face learning in church.
They have chosen this route because of a limited number of teaching volunteers.
Either way, we pray that these resources will meet a unique need and help you reach the children in your spiritual care with the gospel of Jesus.
Jesus Lives!
Ray Schumacher
Curriculum Product Editor