Please think through the truths Ken Hemphill teaches in his book Revitalizing the Sunday Morning Dinosaur: A Sunday School Growth Strategy for the 21st Century. I have selected different quotes. Please take the time to look over the sections. My main challenge is to get you to read the book. 

This book will challenge and motivate you. All of us want to evangelize the world and make a difference in the world we live in. The Great Commission is our Lord’s heartbeat.

I am afraid that the Sunday School has lost its appeal and purpose in our churches. We are seeing few people saved through our Sunday Schools. 

Would you be interested if there were a way to change that and see more saved through your Sunday school ministry? Would you put the work in to see more souls reached for the kingdom?

We must reach souls. We must be more than just a fellowship or social club. Please read along with me and let God make a difference in your church.

The book starts off with a couple of quotes that I love, laughed at and I imagine is how you might just feel. 

“The Sunday School is the finest integrated church growth tool on the market today!”

“If the Sunday School is a church growth tool, somebody unplugged mine!”

Sunday School as a church growth tool? This sounds hard to believe when some church growth writers are predicting the demise of the Sunday School. They have labeled it a dinosaur, a relic of a past age. Some contend that the Sunday School was an important growth tool of the past, but it is facing extinction as the church enters the twenty-first century. Are they right?

Our intention should never be to preserve an organization for the sake of sheer nostalgia; we need to find tools and organizations that will enable us to fulfill the Great Commission most efficiently. I believe

It is my conviction that the Sunday School has not lost its effectiveness as a growth tool, but that we no longer use it for its intended purpose. A screwdriver is an effective tool when used properly but is totally ineffective at driving nails.

In 1902, E. Y. Mullins said, “The Sunday school must more and more prove a factor of power in the pastor’s work. Already in many churches the Sunday school is the chief and almost only hope for church growth [my emphasis]. But whether in the family church, or the church among the masses of the great city, or the country church, the Sunday school will remain the most hopeful field of evangelistic endeavor.”

Arthur Flake, a layman who was instrumental in shaping Southern Baptist Sunday School, wrote, “The supreme business of Christianity is to win the lost to Christ. This is what churches are for … surely then the Sunday school must relate itself to the winning of the lost to Christ as an ultimate objective.”

The early architects of the Sunday School movement in America believed that the Sunday School must have a Great Commission focus. They did not believe that Sunday School could function properly without a clear and intentional strategy of evangelism. After persons were won to Christ, the Sunday School would nurture and train these new believers even as it helped mature all believers. Yet clearly the enthusiasm and energy for an effective Sunday School came from its clear evangelistic focus.