Audiovisuals: How Important
The sense of hearing should always be conjoined with that of sight, and the tongue should be trained in combination with the hand. The subjects that are taught should not merely be taught orally, and thus appeal to the ear alone, but should be pictorially illustrated, and thus develop the imagination by the help of the eye. Again, the pupils should learn to speak with their mouths and at the same time to express what they say with their hands, that no study be proceeded with before what has already been learned is thoroughly impressed on the eyes, the ears, the understanding, and the memory.… If this be done, it is incredible how much it assists a teacher to impress his instructions on the pupil’s mind.
So said John Amos Comenius, a great Christian scholar who died in 1671. Comenius is recognized by many educational historians as the founder of the audiovisual emphasis. Strangely enough, three centuries later many teachers still attempt to communicate with little or no use of audiovisual aids.
Gene A. Getz says in Audiovisual Media in Christian Education (Moody, 1972), a book that no church should be without, “It is easy for a Bible student to understand why Comenius believed in the value of sensory experience in learning, for a study of the Word of God reveals that God and His appointed teachers made extensive use of visual instruction. Comenius in his biblical studies evidently discovered that the Old Testament and New Testament are rich in examples of how visual aids have been used in Jewish and Christian education.”
Getz takes pains to show in his book how both the theory and the philosophy of visual education are grounded in the Bible. God himself “illustrated,” with signs in the heavens and wonders here on earth, much of what he told the prophets of old.
Tapping And Training Teachers
Getting good teachers and other workers into positions where their talents can be used most effectively is one of the toughest ongoing challenges in church life. Church programs are continually plagued by a shortage of the right people for particular tasks. Fortunately, there is plenty of sound advice available on setting up a reliable recruitment system.
The first step is to take an inventory of talents and interests. Find out what people are willing to do and how much ability they have. Among several recent books that give detailed instructions on how to go about this step is Organization and Leadership in the Local Church (Zondervan, 1973) by Kenneth K. Kilinski and Jerry C. Wofford. These authors also offer guidelines on how to make selections.
Often the system bogs down early, at the point of approaching prospects. Kilinski and Wofford recite queries we all have heard: “We cannot get anyone else to do it, would you do it?” “It really won’t take much time and not much is expected.” “We have a class of eight boys who are climbing the walls. We need a teacher today” The authors comment, “There is no better way to minimize the task and to promote mediocrity in it than to use the wrong methods of enlistment.” They argue that if we believe the Lord’s work is a matter of the utmost importance, we must begin to treat it as such.
Every church should have training programs for teachers, but very few do. Regrettably, not much has been written about the teacher-training process. There are many good books, however, that teachers can use to improve their performance. Teachers need to be urged and perhaps even required to use available materials of this sort and to apply what they learn. Discreet evaluation programs can be instituted to measure progress.
Curriculum Cafeteria
Faced with falling Sunday-school enrollments, curriculum planners for leading Protestant denominations are embarking on a “Shared Approaches” project they hope will woo back some of the alienated laypersons. It is being developed by an ecumenical partnership called Joint Educational Development (JED) at a cost of $3.5 million. Their idea is to produce educational resources using four approaches, related and complementary but not interdependent. The local church will be able to choose one or draw from all four, and will be offered help in planning a total educational program.
A major objective is to halt the decline in sales of denominational Sunday-school materials. More and more local churches have been switching to independent publishing houses whose materials are more conservative theologically. A JED staff member noted, “One thing we’ve learned from the current upheaval in church life is that there is no one pattern that will fit every church.” The first public announcement of “Shared Approaches” did not, however, address itself to how the material will deal with theological diversity. A Presbyterian children’s editor simply affirmed that “the churches look to us for sound biblical scholarship in our resources. It is not necessary to twist a story in order to simplify it. Our resources will be reviewed by biblical and theological specialists. We should be able to avoid the kind of error and gross inadequacy that is found so frequently in non-denominational or commercially produced curriculum resources.”
Some latitude can be expected. Even the word “curriculum” is being avoided because some feel it suggests that education can be done through a package of resources defining what local education must be and how it should be developed. As one staff writer put it, “No one can tell the churches how to run their programs today.”
The first of the four approaches, “Knowing the Word,” will include three sets of easy-to-use resources for Bible study in weekly sessions for kindergarten through adult. The second, “Interpreting the Word,” is said to go into greater depth and use more advanced study techniques. The third, “Living the Word,” described as the most comprehensive, apparently will go beyond the Sunday-school hour in seeking to nourish educational needs of the local church in a variety of ways. The fourth approach, “Doing the Word,” will stress social action; short production schedules will be attempted in order to focus upon issues still timely.
The full spectrum of the project will emerge during the next three years. Planning tools are already available, and the first set of Approach 1 (“Knowing the Word”) resources is scheduled for use this fall. To date, the following denominations have taken part in the developing of materials: American Baptist, Associate Reformed Presbyterian, Church of the Brethren, Cumberland Presbyterian, Disciples, Evangelical Covenant, Moravian, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Presbyterian U. S., Reformed Church in America, United Church of Canada, United Church of Christ, United Methodist, and United Presbyterian.
Where’S The Pastor?
In some churches, the pastor is too involved in the educational programs. Particularly in smaller churches he tends to take on a wide assortment of duties because he presumably can perform them better than anyone else. But this is a short-sighted approach. As Kenneth O. Gangel puts it in Leadership For Church Education (Moody, 1970), “The wise pastor is not on the job very long before he discovers that one of the finest goals of his ministry is the developing of Timothys. When an effective pastor leaves the church, he leaves behind a trained leadership that is more competent and stronger in force than it was when he came.”
In other churches, the pastor isolates himself from specific ministries, hoping that those directly responsible will manage somehow on their own and save him from worrying about their problems. This, too, is an undesirable extreme. Gangel says the entire congregation must know that the pastor has definite interest in the educational program, and that he is observing what goes on. His contribution should be continual encouragement and inspiration of teachers, workers, and students.
The Sunday school, traditionally the backbone of the church educational program, is nevertheless only one part of it. Church programs have been becoming increasingly diverse in recent years, and the pastor should make certain that the efforts are being correlated. Mutual reinforcement happens when all the programs are developed in line with established overall goals, and when leaders regularly evaluate achievement.
Lasting Impact
I think what I have found is that the basic concepts of the Sunday school faith I was brought up with keep coming back to me newer and fresher and keep getting more and more indispensable: the meaning of sin, the meaning of forgiveness, the blessed hope, the need for prayer, the indispensability of the scriptures, not simply as a formal, mechanical guide to thinking, but as a living source of personal renewal.—MEROLD WESTPHAL, professor of philosophy, State University of New York, in the January, 1975, issue of the Post-American.
