Who has the best Sunday School literature?

We don't use anyone's pre-printed "Sunday School Literature." Every class is taught directly from the exposition of the Bible. I guess being located close to a Baptist Seminary and having an abundance of qualified Seminary Students and Professors to teach classes helps us avoid the canned Sunday School Literature. I highly recomend that more churches begin to study the biblical texts by conducting solid exegesis, exposition, and application in their Sunday School Classes.

 

What was really popular in one church that I was in, was the "Bill Wilson Power Toolbox".

 

The Sunday School classes at are church are given wide latitude regarding literature.

Some classes use the SBC material (Lifeway). Others use Smyth & Helwys material. Some others do not use literature, but do book studies and/or have the curriculum created by the class leadership.

In the class I currently help teach, we use the Smyth & Helwys literature as a starting place. We generally try to use the selected text and as much of the material as we find useful (sometimes that's nearly all of it, sometimes it's not much) and then build our lesson from there. For us, it provides some consistency from Sunday to Sunday and ensures that we cover a variety of biblical texts.

I am in the process of developing a new class for 20-somethings in our church that will start next month. For that class we have decided that I am going to write most of the curriculum because of the way we have decided to structure the class. We are trying to "recover" the recent college grads who have come back to town to work who used to be members of our church and also attracted 20-somethings who have never been a member of a church before but have realized that there is more to life than being a student.

The curriculum is designed to introduce the gospel in non-churchy ways, teach how to study the scriptures, and present the fundamentals of being a disciple of Jesus. As part of the program, we are also teaching life skills such as practical financial management (tying it back to Christian stewardship), wholesome dating and marriage (tying it back to our calling and responsibilities as Christians), and professional ethics (tying it back to Christian ethics) -- among other issues.

 

Not all people learn the same way, some learn best with lectures, some need active participation, others learn best with skits, others with group work.

For that reason we use Lifeway literature, although others are equally as good. The writers of good SS literature know the different learning styles of students and incorporate them into thier literature. The question is how do the teachers teach it!

When a writer for Lifeway submits a teaching plan he (or she) has to identify and incorporate at least three different learning styles in the lesson.

 

I really do like RBP also, but we often have our own specials. The 7th and 8th grade boys I teach use the "Contenders for the Faith" material. www.keepersofthefaith.com .

 

Our children and middle school students use GospelLight material. The adults use LifeWay. I really like the GospelLight stuff for students.

 

I am a Southern Baptist but have to attend another denomination since the local Baptist Church refuses to let me attend with my family. The church I attend uses Southern Baptist Sunday School material. So at least I feel a little bit at home

 

Our SBC church uses Lifeway material of course, but when I teach a class (as a substitute teacher) I generally ignore all the prepared material and teach the bible passage itself the material is based on. My procedure is to make up a list of questions for the class to discuss, and work through the list, guiding the discussion as we go to keep it on track. This automatically greatly assists in pitching the lesson discussion to the level the class is ready for.

 

Jimmy C - Have you ever considered Faithweaver from Group Publishing? Varied learning styles is the main basis for their method of presentation.

Anyone else famiiar with it?

 

Hi everyone The Free Will Baptist Church uses RH Publishing, and also Standard Publishing Company. A Lot of great biblical material.

 

Debby,

I am not familiar with it, but I will check it out. where do you find it?

 

Faithweaver is one product line of Group Publishing. Their name come from that fact that they started out doing materials for youth groups, and it grew from there. Their parent site is www.grouppublishing.com. From there you can go to Faithweaver or any other of the product lines. I am not a salesperson - just a satisfied customer.

They have magazines for children's workers, youth workers, pastors, etc. The kids' music is great.