Ken Hemphill: If the Sunday School is such an effective growth tool, why are so few churches growing?

In the first two churches I pastored we experienced growth; it was reflected in the Sunday School attendance, but it was not driven by the Sunday School organization. The Sunday School was simply the recipient of growth, not the catalyst of growth. In these churches the growth was fueled by visitation, worship, and an aggressive youth program.

In one pastorate I stumbled over the potential for growth through the Sunday School. We had a number of young single members who were regular in worship attendance but had not attended Sunday School since they were in the youth department. We began a college and career class. To my amazement the class began to attract other young singles who had not been attending church anywhere. They were brought by friends! At that time I knew little about the growth principles of homogeneity and receptivity, but later I began to see that these accepted growth principles were inherent in the Sunday School structure.

On another occasion, we started a pastor’s class for a group of median adult couples who attended our worship service but were uncomfortable in our existing Sunday School structure. In this case too, the class grew and attracted a new group of folk not previously involved in the church. Forming the new classes created a permanent growth situation. Both church membership and attendance increased and were sustained at these new higher levels. Other growth projects had produced momentary gains, but those gains had soon dissipated. Little did I know that I was discovering the value of the “New Unit Principle,” which I will describe later in this chapter.

The growth discovery

I became the pastor of First Baptist Church of Norfolk in 1981. The church had recently relocated near the rapidly growing Virginia Beach area in Tidewater. A fire that destroyed the downtown plant had forced the move in the early 1970s. At the new location the church grew rapidly, peaking at an average of 550 in Sunday School attendance in 1976. It then declined slowly back to the 380 average Sunday School attendance mark that I inherited in 1981.

During the early months of my ministry at First, Norfolk, God began to give us immediate and spectacular results. People were joining the church every Sunday. This rapid growth was taxing to me and the one other staff person serving the church. After I had been serving the church for six months, my staff colleague was called to serve alongside the former pastor. Not only did we have insufficient staffing, but also we had even less money and physical resources. Before you think I am painting a bleak picture, I must be honest to tell you that I discovered one incredible asset. The church was blessed with a highly committed group of laypeople who had been praying for God to awaken the church to its potential and who were willing to work. Many of these persons had been faithfully serving in the Sunday School program for many years.

In those early months, I focused on the basics: preaching, teaching, training, and visiting. The rapid growth of the church was exciting but draining. The church outgrew my ability and energy rather quickly. I soon began to ask myself, “How do I care for the needs of all the church members and continue to reach the lost?” While I knew that God was sufficient, I had grave doubts about my own sufficiency. The needs were overwhelming. The young couples we were reaching had several small children, and the preschool was quickly overcrowded. We needed workers! We had seen many people profess Christ as Savior, but now we faced a huge discipling task. How could we organize to accomplish this massive task? I knew that if I stopped emphasizing our new visitation program, we would stop reaching the lost. My passion for the lost of Tidewater would not permit me to consider such an option even though many other tasks vied for our attention and resources.

I began to devour church growth books in an attempt to find a means of coping with the growth that God was causing in our church. In each book I would find good ideas and helpful organizational structure, but it was disjointed in my thinking. With our limited staff and resources, I knew that I needed a more integrated tool, one that was simple to organize and manage.

The converging streams

Several events flowed together in my own experience that led to the conviction that the Sunday School, with its age-graded, small-group structure, might be the integrated growth tool for which I was searching.

With my Sunday School director, Dick Baker, I attended a Growth Spiral Conference led by Andy Anderson. As Andy described the Sunday School Growth Spiral, I began to recognize many parallels between the principles he was espousing and those in the pile of church growth books I had been reading. The parallels between Sunday School work and church growth principles were numerous and unmistakable.

Then it dawned on me: I already have a single organization that embraces acknowledged church growth principles. Why should I create several more ministries to do the work Sunday School was designed to do?

I left that conference with a clear vision, and I was committed to make Sunday School the central organization for church growth. On the drive home, Dick and I talked about setting enrollment goals, establishing new teaching units, and administrating the Sunday School as a growth ministry, not just a maintenance organization.

I began with an abundance of zeal and a modicum of knowledge. Our first enrollment goal was for a net gain of 840 persons in Bible study. I enthusiastically had posters and banners made declaring that goal. Little did I know that a goal for over 60 percent net gain in a single year was impossible in a large church. With supernatural empowering and clear vision, even the impossible is achievable. We actually exceeded our growth goals for the year. We were well on our way to using the Sunday School as a growth tool.

One question still plagued me: If the Sunday School is such an effective growth tool, why are so few churches growing? Most of the churches that I knew about in our area had some small-group Bible study plan that resembled our Sunday School organization. Why were so few churches experiencing any real growth? Something was missing.

I found the missing factor in the equation when I attended a conference with Harry Piland, former director of the Sunday School division of the Baptist Sunday School Board. Piland stated that any adult Bible study class that had not attempted to lead anyone to Christ during the past year had missed their purpose for existing. He then affirmed that Sunday School must first be an evangelistic tool. Sunday School and outreach evangelism! I had never really connected the Sunday School with evangelistic outreach. I knew that it was effective for conserving the results of evangelism, but I had never seen a Sunday School designed for outreach.

The idea shocked me, and it rattled some of my finest teachers. Some were so convicted by their lack of evangelistic concern that they even considered resigning their classes. In the end, we all decided that repentance was more appropriate than resignation. Thus began the vision to give the Sunday School an evangelistic focus at First Baptist, Norfolk.

The event that allowed me to integrate my thinking about church growth and Sunday School was the opportunity to teach a course entitled “Growing an Evangelistic Church” at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The course was designed to cover every phase of church growth. I required my students to read a wide range of materials from several different authors. As I was lecturing on the ratios for church growth, I was dumbfounded by the similarities between the ratios for growth described by Win Arn, one of the founding fathers of the church, and basic Sunday School principles. This discovery caused me to examine more closely basic Sunday School concepts and principles espoused by church growth authors. It was the final clue that helped me discover the evangelistic Sunday School as an integrated growth tool.

Hemphill, K. (1996). Revitalizing the Sunday Morning Dinosaur: A Sunday school growth Strategy for the 21st Century (pp. 7–10). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Dr. Ken Hemphill is a frequent speaker at All Star Sunday School Training events. As former pastor of one of the largest and fastest growing Sunday Schools in the nation, he effectively communicates -- especially to pastors -- about how to use Sunday School effectively. He is also the general editor of a non-disposable Sunday School literature. See http://www.auxanopress.com/

To schedule an All Star Sunday School Training event, see http://allstarsundayschool.com/ or contact Josh Hunt at josh@joshhunt.com 575.650.4564