Sunday schools, when operated with vision, vigour and evangelistic purpose, achieve great things, and their distinctive virtues ought to be appreciated and extolled. Like no other agency they enable us to reach a large part of the rising generation, and to draw children and teenagers to the Saviour.
Indeed, whether or not a congregation contains young people saved from the neighbourhood will usually depend on whether there has been an effective Sunday School, coupled with teenage Bible Classes. The general rule is – no Sunday School ministry, no saved teens and twenties in the church, except, perhaps, for children of believers, and those converted in some other church. It is as predictable and inevitable as that.
Warning and protecting
But aside from its evangelistic purpose, the Sunday School is also a vital ministry of warning. We must not forget that we have a dual ministry, because God has determined that his mercy and his love will be declared to all so that those who reject him shall, in the last day, be without excuse. We are to warn and teach everyone (Colossians 1.28).
However, there are other special and glorious attributes of Sunday Schools which we should value very highly. For example, Sunday Schools protect the young like no other agency on earth. They gather young people in from the community and rescue them from the foul rape of the mind carried out by this present world. They deliver children from the murder of their souls, ruthlessly perpetuated by an evil, arrogant, apostate age. They snatch young lives from the pain and injury of the permissive society. May God so bless our Sunday Schools that children and teenagers shall grow up – even if not yet saved – unscathed from the worst excesses of moral experiment and sin.
We have seen great deliverances arising from this aspect of Sunday School ministry. Throughout this land many former Sunday School and Bible Class children have embarked upon young adulthood possessing a training which has not yet had a saving impact on their lives. Then, just as they have been about to launch into some moral excess, something has stopped them. What they have heard from God’s Word has restrained their minds and hearts, and enabled them to see the futility and immorality of the route they were about to take. We have heard of those who have been suddenly sickened as they were about to immerse themselves in some utterly godless, blasphemous or sensual activity. Their Sunday School background held them back, and the Holy Spirit used it to bring them under conviction.
We see the same divine handiwork in the annals of Christian biography, where godless men and women have suddenly heard again – in their hearts – long-forgotten elements of childhood instruction. It is a teacher’s privilege to be able to put a shield of Truth around the young to protect them from the destruction and mutilation of sin.
In the communities around our churches there are countless young people who are being subjected at this very moment to the most savage anti-Christian brainwashing, and only the Sunday School can help them. It delivers children from being duped by this present world, and from being spiritually maimed and hurt.