Bible lessons still relevant

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 30, 1997 | by Larry Witham

Recently, in Sunday schools across the United States, 30 million Americans of all ages opened their Bibles to the letters to Timothy and Titus and discussed what it means to be members of the Christian church.

Nothing has united the Protestant Sunday-school movement more than the Uniform Bible Lessons, now in their 125th year. The lessons were created in the 1860s by a Southern Baptist layman and a Methodist minister. Today, panelists from 21 denominations meet annually to plan 52 lessons. Each denomination then produces its own materials based on the outline. The lessons cover the complete Scriptures in six years.

But the movement faces a new challenge: how to reverse declining enrollments and reach a society uninterested in learning the Bible. "The Sunday-school movement began as an evangelical outreach," says the Rev. Michael Dixon, who represents the Disciples of Christ on the uniform-lessons panel. Nearly all Protestants in the baby-boom generation attended Sunday school in the 1950s and 1960s, but the institution has fallen on harder times. Surveys show that only four in 10 Americans can name all four Gospels. "For the past few generations, Sunday school took care of people in church," says Dixon. "Now we are looking at it again as reaching out in a biblically illiterate culture."

Church educators have been trying new methods, even abandoning the Sunday-school format altogether. "Now we have churches moving to Saturday school," said Mary Love, uniform-lessons officer for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Few congregations still have an instructor who will talk before a class. "We are leaning towards participatory learning," she says.

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, "we're seeing a lot of congregations going to midweek offerings or small-group offerings," says Miriam Dumke, associate director of Christian education for children. "The most growing congregations would reflect small-group studies for adults." Evangelical Lutherans can attend a "Bible basics" study, for example, that focuses on 10 persons, 10 events and 10 passages in the Bible. "It's like Christianity 101," says Dumke.

Protestant churches are feeling a boost from new Parents enrolling a new generation of children, however. To make the most of this, the Southern Baptist Convention aims to open 100,000 more Sunday-school classes.

"Adult Sunday school tends to be more fellowship, a light touch," says retired United Methodist Bishop Richard B. Wilke, formerly of Arkansas. Ten years ago, he set out to pioneer more effective adult instruction. The result is a 34-week program, "Becoming Disciples Through Bible Study," that is sweeping church circles.

"We decided to make it a very strong personal discipline," says Wilke about the program, which boasts 500,000 graduates. "It gets people into the Scripture. The church is grounded in Scripture."

Ten years ago, the bishop and his wife researched the Bible curriculum, hoping to create a new one that changed people. They didn't want to make their study informational, but "transformation."

"Becoming Disciples" demands 40 minutes of Bible reading every day and a two-and-a-half-hour meeting each week. Each session opens with a 10-minute videotape of a Bible expert introducing the topic. A group leader encourages discussion, especially on the idea of discipleship.

In studying the story of Abraham in the book of Genesis, for example, a group addresses the proposition, "I will go where I want." But as with Abraham, "a dimple asks where God wants me to go," corrects Wilke.

"We didn't realize the hunger that contemporary people have for Scriptures," says the bishop, who has taken the nondenominational program worldwide. Second and third versions of the program are completed, and a fourth is on its way.