Feature: Why We Moved Sunday School To Saturday
Harold A. Carter
by Harold A. Carter, pastor. New Shiloh Baptist Church, Baltimore, Maryland
Studying the Bible at 9:30 on Sunday morning was a great idea in the days when there was little to do on Saturday night besides take a bath. It may still be a good idea in many parts of the country. But in 1972, as an urban congregation of 2,000 members with fewer than 200 in Sunday school, we had to admit that the traditional format had lost its impact. The problem was not with the teachers, who were dedicated to their task. Something had happened to the times. Urbanization had eroded community involvement in the local church. Saturday night shopping sprees and family activities were sapping Sunday morning energy. With television filling our society with an entertainment syndrome, it became increasingly clear that an hour of Christian education on Sundays wasn't making the kind of impact needed for our age. We formed an exploratory committee to come up with specific recommendations to improve the quality of Sunday school. After meeting off and on throughout much of the year, these eight persons urged the church to: • move the full church school to Saturday between the hours of 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., starting in October, 1973; • become Bible centered, and supplement basic reference books with literature we wrote ourselves; • discontinue Sunday school as an organized department and put all energies into Saturday; • go into the community and publicize widely; • follow the Christian year in worship; • consciously seek to be evangelistic and family-oriented. We decided to take the bold step. Our posters, radio spots, and word-of-mouth advertisement went out. One thousand pupils enrolled the first Saturday, most of them not members of our church. One of the first unexpected ...
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