Last Sunday, I mentioned our Sunday School switch and our desire for more Sunday School teachers. As the number of children in our congregation grows, the need for more teachers is evident. In the fall of 2020 we will have a group of young people starting confirmation. These are good challenges to be facing, but we have to prepare for them.
If you’re anything like I was the year before I started teaching Sunday School, back in 1999, you probably had no inkling it was something you’d be asked to do. Perhaps at the thought of yourself teaching Sunday School you say to yourself, “I don’t know enough,” or “I’m not good with kids,” or “I’m too old,” or “I’m too young,” or some other negative thing about yourself. I know I’ve done that about myself. In 1999 I had to be the youngest Sunday School teacher St. Paul Lutheran Church had ever seen in its 100+ year history, but God shaped me through that experience, and he shaped my four kindergarteners.
In 2003, in my first year of college, I started having unwanted, unbidden thoughts that maybe I should become a pastor. I tried to repress them, hide them, explain them away with how I wasn’t enough. Despite my best efforts, God had other plans. People I barely knew started coming up to me and asking if I’d ever thought about being a pastor. No joke: there was one week where at least a dozen people had this conversation with me. Some of them were strangers at a church I had never even attended before.
Sometimes God does that. Sometimes God works through other people to nudge us in the direction that He wants us to go. I didn’t listen very well. It took 10 years before I actually stepped foot on the seminary campus for my first day of classes, but I don’t know that I would have kept thinking about it if it hadn’t been for the encouragement of others.
Teaching Sunday School might not be your gift or your calling. That’s okay. You may be called to some other form of service in the church and community, but you also might be surprised by how well you take to the task and how much God blesses you as you pass on the faith to His children. Think about it. Pray about it.
God’s blessings on your week.
Pastor Andy
