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Why one of the church's loneliest ministries doesn't have to be
THE MORE WE TEACH TOGETHER
by Eddy Hall
When Delora agreed to teach third grade Sunday school at Faith Lutheran in Derby, Kansas, she said yes, but on one condition: "It's one year at a time." After a year, she quit. Why? "I had such high expectations of myself that it was exhausting to meet them."
Delora is neither underqualified (professionally she teaches fifth grade in a private school) nor is she a victim of unrealistically high expectations. In fact, today she is teaching Sunday school again and says, "I can't tell you how much fun it is!"
What's made the difference? Team teaching.
Every summer thousands of churches scramble to find enough teachers for fall Sunday school. As tempting as it is to blame this annual frustration on low commitment, the real culprit may be how we structure our classes.
Solo teaching with small classes, our most common way of conducting Sunday school, can make teaching children a lot harder--and less effective--than it needs to be. A team approach, where each ministry team works with a larger group of children, can bring out the best in children's workers and make children's ministry far more rewarding and effective. Here's why.
* Team teaching empowers every team member to minister out of his or her spiritual gifts. Almost every church has a few teachers who can make the Bible come alive for children, but probably none can unearth a master teacher for every small children's class. Some people are great at leading children in worship. Others are gifted with crafts or memory work. Rarely is any one person good at all these things, yet we expect solo teachers to do them all. Should we be surprised then when teachers feel overwhelmed?
Delora's three-member team teaches 20 to 30 fourth- through sixth-graders. Phyllis is great with pencil and paper games. David comes up with creative role plays. Delora shines at physical play. "I learn so much from watching how my teammates teach," Delora says. When every member of the team is ministering out of his or her gifts, ministry is more fun and more effective.
* Team teaching cuts preparation time. One approach to team teaching is for a master teacher to do all the preparation and for the other team members to assist. It's a lot easier to find people who enjoy working as care givers than it is to recruit solo teachers.
Another system is to divide preparation among team members. At Hope Mennonite in Wichita, after a large-group opening, the primary class breaks into three smaller groups. Each group goes to one of three activity centers. After ten minutes, the children rotate to different centers. Each worker leads the same activity three times with a different group of children. Each teacher needs only one-third the preparation time she needed under the old system.
* Team teaching builds in support. Four years ago when Faith Lutheran collected the teacher feedback forms after its vacation Bible school, teacher after teacher wrote, "I'll never do this again." Something had to change. The next year, the VBS directors decided to try team teaching. Several new VBS workers enjoyed it so much they volunteered to work regularly in Sunday school. In fact, since starting teaching teams in Sunday school, Faith has had almost no teacher turnover. "Phyllis thought about quitting," Delora says, "but it looks like she probably won't because of her friendships with the team."
* Team teaching requires fewer workers. Consider, for example, a church that averages 24 children in grades one through three--a first grade class of four students, and second and third grade classes of ten students each. To have one teacher for every six students, this department needs five teachers (one for grade one, and two each for grades two and three), plus a primary department supervisor--a total of six workers.
With a team approach, the work can be done, and done more effectively, by four workers, still providing the needed one to six ratio. Since each ministry team has internal leadership, no separate department supervisor is needed. Stillmeadow Nazarene in York, Pennsylvania, eliminated seven department supervisor positions this way.
* Team teaching eliminates the substitute problem. If one team member has to be gone one Sunday, the others may feel able to carry on without a substitute for one day. Or if a substitute is called in, he won't have any preparation.
Even more important is the impact on students. The heart of children's ministry isn't the printed curriculum, but the loving relationship between teachers and students through which a Christlike life is modeled. A team guarantees that students will be with teachers they know well even when one team member is away.
* Team teaching models Christian community. As children watch adults ministering as a team, they learn more about how God designed the body of Christ to work than they can learn from any Bible lesson on body life. As they watch mature Christians love, support, and forgive each other, they learn what it means to live in Christian community.
* Team teaching can make discipline problems almost disappear. Disruptive children can drive teachers away because they are so exhausting. Delora has found that team teaching has solved this problem in her class. "We take turns teaching the lesson," she explains. "When David or Phyllis is teaching, I sit in the circle on the floor with the other students. For that week, I am a student, not a teacher. Sometimes I sit beside a student who needs extra attention, but by being part of the class, I become a friend with these children. Because we're relating as friends, the disruptive behavior has practically disappeared."
* As a bonus, team teaching saves money on facilities. Large-group team teaching uses space more efficiently than small-group solo teaching. Olivet Evangelical Free Church in Muskegon, Michigan, needed growing room for their children's and teen's Sunday school classes. They considered building a 3000-square-foot youth building, but discovered that even that wouldn't meet their needs.
The solution they finally came up with was to tear out all their interior basement walls to eliminate their little classrooms and create a few large open areas--one for grades 1-3, one for grades 4-6, and one for teens. They would reconfigure their small classes into larger team-taught groups meeting in flexible multi-purpose space. Each space would have multiple work stations so students could work in smaller groups as appropriate. All furnishings would be portable with a room for active storage nearby so the space could also be used at other times for larger scale activities such as recreation.
Remodeling their basement and switching to team teaching will give Olivet's children's and teens' classes room to grow by 60% to 70% for a fraction of the cost of new construction.
If team teaching is new to your church, how can you introduce it? By experimenting. Almost every teacher who gets a taste of team teaching will jump at the chance to do it regularly. Try it out in vacation Bible school or a weeknight activity program. Or introduce it in one or two classes and let everyone see how it works before suggesting the whole children's department take the plunge.
What you'll discover, I suspect, is that the more we teach together, the more rewarding and effective our ministry with children will be.
This article is adapted from WHEN NOT TO BUILD: An Architect's Unconventional Wisdom for the Growing Church, second edition (Baker, 2000) by Ray Bowman and Eddy Hall. The book is available through the Living Stones Associates website (www.living-stones.com).
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