Good Sunday
School Records and Evangelism Go Hand in Hand!
by Robert
Stewart
Consider
these suggestions for asking for using good Sunday School enrollment
records for evangelism and discipleship development.
1.
Pray for an attitude for inviting people to be enrolled in Sunday School.
Develop the habit of easily and comfortably talking with people about your
Bible study groups.
2.
Be alert for opportunities to invite people to enroll in Sunday School
anytime, everywhere.
3.
Adopt a good enrollment records plan such as the Broadman Record System
Revised.
Make it easy for people to enroll, but drop names only after exhausting
every effort to involve and minister.
4.
Train teachers and workers to understand enrollment as only the first
step.
Encouragement, ministry, good teaching, interesting class sessions and
lessons, assimilation and bringing newcomers into the existing group or
cliques must follow enrollment. ("A lot of people don’t attend
Sunday School because they’ve been!" -Robert Stewart, NC State
Sunday School director, retired.)
5.
Enlist and train class Care Group Leaders who will make weekly contacts
and ministry
actions when needed. When properly enlisted, trained and encouraged these
Care Group leaders can become a strong team of associate ministers through
whom the pastor can multiply his pastoral ministries.
6.
Don’t just "keep" the roll; use the enrolment roster to
measure quantitative and qualitative growth of individuals and the church.
Pastors and Sunday School directors will want to study the records to
notice if members are being challenged to study their Bibles, to give
regularly, to read their Bibles, and to contact and invite unchurched and
unsaved people to be in Bible Study. Properly used Sunday School records
help measure not only how many people were present but the degree to which
they feel Bible study is important and the degree to which they are
putting into practice some of the basics of Christian discipleship. Head
counts alone provide very little chance to measure quality.
7.
Be inclusive, not exclusive. Make
it easy for people to join Sunday School, but make it difficult for the
class to lose touch with persons. Remember, Jesus seemed to welcome
everyone, even sinners!
8.
Carry forward from year to year a good enrollment-records plan. Do not drop all names and start over each year.
Instead, assign each member of the previous year to a class
enrollment-records roster for the new year. Don’t risk losing contact
with even one person!
9.
Make dropping a name a serious and sad occasion. Use official "drop requests" signed by the teacher or
outreach leader. If the person still lives in the community consider
reassignment to a different class. Adopt a church policy about Sunday
School enrollment that restricts indiscriminate dropping of people. Some
churches have a policy that when someone joins the church he/she becomes a
member of Sunday School and is assigned to an appropriate class. These
believe that every Christian needs regular Bible study; these make Sunday
School responsible.
10.
Frequently remind the church and leaders that Sunday School enrolment a
major key in reaching people and discipling believers. Enrolling people in a caring, loving and nurturing class is an important
first step toward developing them as growing disciples of Christ!
Robert Stewart,
Retired Director, Bible Teaching Reaching Team, Congregational Growth and
Development Group, Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Email:
rstewart55@nc.rr.com
For additional Sunday School growth
resources, contact Phil Stone, Bible Teaching/Church Administration Team
Leader, P. O. Box
1107, Cary, NC 27512-1107. 800-395-5102, Ext. 427.
Email
pstone@bscnc.org.
Visit the Sunday School web page at http://www.bscnc.org
