Rumors of death were not greatly exaggerated for two affiliate agencies of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).
To some evangelicals, Christian education had meant either the National Association of Christian Schools (NACS) or the National Sunday School Association (NSSA). Each agency had existed for more than three decades: NACS, created in 1947, was one of the first organizations for church-operated schools, while NSSA, organized in 1945 and remembered most for its annual conventions, had been called “the unified voice of Christian education in America.”
But with the passing years, each group declined in influence. When NAE executive director Billy Melvin announced recently that NACS and NSSA would be phased out (to be incorporated into an all-encompassing national commission on Christian education) few persons familiar with the situation were surprised. NACS, with over 300 member schools just six years ago, had only 91 members when its offices closed last month. NSSA had operated “in name only” for the last several years, said an NAE official.
It is not that the agencies lost their function. The new commission, not yet organized, is billed as providing similar services. Melvin explained, “This commission will be concerned with total Christian education as it is represented within a local church—the Sunday schools, youth ministries, and Christian schools.”
The demise of both NACS and NSSA reflects, therefore, a changing atmosphere in Christian education—where bigger is sometimes better and where specialized agencies often feel stifled under the control of an umbrella organization.
During the early 1970s, NACS and NSSA leaders had requested their respective independence from NAE. In each instance, the NAE hierarchy refused to cut loose these affiliate groups. Each agency complained of being placed at times in the position of having to defend NAE to member groups, who were upset over something the parent body had done. Wilfred Frykman, the last president of NSSA, described a “can’t win” situation for his organization. Some conservative groups threatened to pull out of NSSA unless it dropped its affiliation with the “too liberal” NAE; other members were NAE supporters who said they would resign from NSSA if it dropped affiliation with the NAE. In any case, said Frykman, “we were having trouble trying to get members.”
When the NSSA board of directors requested its independence from NAE in 1974 and was refused, the board voted to dissolve. Its executive director, Don Brandenburgh, left to become head of a new Christian publishers association. Within that group were many former members of the NSSA board, which had “twelve to fifteen heads of Christian publishing firms,” said Frykman—who is now retired, but at the time was president of Scripture Press.
Former NSSA officials say the organization reached its peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s. NSSA had its own building and constituency, and generated wide appeal through its annual conventions and national Sunday school week promotions. NSSA also produced various kinds of Sunday school promotional material and provided individualized counseling to local Sunday schools.
In recent years Christian publishers began providing (or at least offering) many of the same services provided by the NSSA. Some observers say the publishers preferred that Sunday school planners be dependent on them rather than a national commission—and did not give it their whole-hearted support. An NSSA publication, “Concept,” folded in 1972 after a three-month trial—reportedly due to financial problems. This idea magazine got little financial support from publishers or denominations, partly since many of those groups had their own publications.
NSSA, which included denominations, publishers, and area Sunday school associations, also suffered an authority crisis before its decline. Some local and area associations felt strong enough to function without any affiliation with a parent body. Brandenburgh said that members carrying the greatest financial burdens of NSSA should have been, but weren’t, given a greater voice in the association’s decision making. (One former NSSA leader commented, “Nobody wanted the publishers to run the NSSA, but they were providing most of the monetary support.”)
Brandenburgh believes there is still a need for a national Sunday school association. However, he believes such a group should function at the grass roots and without publishers and denominations in its membership. Area Sunday school associations around the country “could get together and say, ‘We want a central organization to coordinate our work.’ ” Such a group would be financed by the member associations, which would give the parent body a percentage of the fees charged to registrants at their respective conventions, Brandenburgh said.
The NACS obituary reads like that of NSSA. Leaders of NACS sought a break from the NAE in 1973: NACS member schools frequently found themselves at ideological and theological odds with NAE, and asked that the NACS separate itself accordingly. When NAE refused to grant NACS its autonomy, sixteen of the eighteen NACS board members quit.
Some NACS member schools shortly thereafter split to form a separate group. A past NACS president, Roy Lowerie, headed the rival association—called the National Christian School Education Association. (This group merged in 1978 with two other Protestant church school associations to form the Association of Christian Schools International [ACSI], of which Lowerie is president.) As a result, NACS membership declined drastically.
The group also had difficulty attracting new members. New Christian school associations, with larger staffs and bigger budgets, could provide more services to potential members. ACSI, for example, began operations with a $6 million credit union. It offers accreditation services and legal counsel to member schools.
Federal officials say church schools are the fastest growing movement in private education in the United States today. These schools increasingly look to leadership from a parent organization to fight on their behalf in the growing number of church-state confrontations. They see the church school as an inseparable part of church ministry.
