People learn something they did not know before. There is more to this than making people smarter, but there is never less. People who sit in a Sunday School class should get educated about the Bible. They should know that Daniel is after David. They should learn how the story of the Bible fits together.

Here is what I observe in Sunday School classes. Think of the body of knowledge as being a map of the United States.

• Week 1 we talk about Colorado.
• Week 2 we talk about the South. There is variety in those two lessons.
• Week 3: New York City.
• Week 4: the west.

Keep this up for 52 weeks. It sounds like variety, but after a while, you are on the same geography over and over and over again. So many Sunday School lessons are the same thing over and over and over again. Every week you ought to bring something in from New Zealand or South Africa.

Your people ought to hear something every single week that they have never heard before. It is the old old story to be sure, but it is illustrated and applied in new ways every week.

This is why, as I write Sunday School lessons, I am constantly buying new books. I have an expansive and expanding library of Logos books, Kindle books and Wordsearch books. It is not uncommon to buy a book just to find some material for one lesson.

If your people do not hear something they have never heard before in every lesson, the only people you will reach are the already committed.