When you have issues with your computer, who do you call? If you have a technical support package, you call the tech support team. An expert listens to your explanation and then walks you through a solution. Or maybe you call a computer-savvy friend who can help you resolve the difficulty. The point is that you deal with the problem; you don’t ignore it and hope it goes away.

When your church has questions about its Sunday School or Christian education program, who are you going to call? Are you aware that Regular Baptist Press has a “tech support team”—five RBP regional managers? Each of these men is located in one of five designated geographical sections of the U.S. and is experienced in the pastorate or Christian education. Each is competent to provide help in a variety of ways. He can talk with you and others in your church about your vision and advise you in solutions to challenges. They are available to you!

Challenges Churches Face

Alan Wilson states that “one of the major challenges church educational ministries have is to grow their Sunday Schools two ways: in numbers and in Bible knowledge.” To succeed, churches need to overcome challenges in the areas of teachers, students, and curriculum.

Teachers

Getting people to volunteer to teach can be an uphill battle, especially if you want them to commit to a full year of teaching. As Dallas Shaw, a former children’s pastor, observes, “[Churches] just can’t get volunteers to run the children’s program or to step up and teach an adult Sunday School class. . . . I think that some of [this reluctance] is [because] people don’t feel prepared or equipped to teach—whether it be children or teens or adults.” Bob King is a former Christian school educator as well as former pastor. He goes a step further and says, “It’s a challenge . . . to get qualified people who not only know the Word of God but are living it. And also [it’s a challenge to get] teachers who understand how to teach Biblical truth.”

Students

But getting qualified, faithful teachers is not the only challenge. Another challenge is to engage students’ interest and to keep Sunday School as a viable place for discipling believers.

Ross Martello views giving youth solid Bible content as a challenge: “Kids have so many forms of media entertainment to do. So trying to get a kid excited about reading and learning God’s Word, I think, is harder today than it was. Reading is not as prominent as it used to be. Not everyone does it well. So . . . getting kids excited and being extremely creative without weakening the message is a challenge.”

Bob points out another challenge: desire vs. people’s needs. “Lots of time people want something, but that’s not really what they need. I’m convinced that people need to have a solid overview of the Word of God . . . and a solid understanding of doctrine. . . . These aren’t necessarily what people want.”

A few churches have dropped Sunday School altogether. Bob observes that these churches “use that time frame for choir practice and other things, but not for teaching the Word of God. So one of the challenges that the C.E. director or associate pastor has to face is to create a desire and appetite for solid Bible training with appropriate application for the age.”

Curriculum

When asked about other challenges that churches face, Tenny Corbett answers, “One is, obviously, finances. The other is finding a plan that fits their church’s need. I guess I’m alluding to . . . scope and sequence.” Bob agrees: “Another challenge is establishing and understanding a ‘big picture’ scope and sequence of Christian education.” Classes in certain churches are hit and miss, doing one thing one quarter and another the next. “Some churches are using multiple curricula throughout their Sunday School for both children and adults, so there are a lot of holes left in the educational process.”

Dallas Shaw came from a church where that was happening. But when he became the children’s pastor, one of his first tasks was “to find a curriculum that was Biblically solid and that would be something our teachers would be excited about teaching. . . . When I came on board, there were five different curriculums, and everybody was doing their own thing.” Dallas began using RBP curriculum, became convinced of its value, and eventually became a regional manager.

Curriculum Solutions

The regional managers for Regular Baptist Press help churches overcome curriculum challenges by providing several solutions: a scope and sequence to organize the church’s educational program, doctrinal content geared for Baptist churches, and resources that suggest effective teaching methods.

Scope and sequence

The RBP curriculum “really fits what churches are looking for,” says Tenny. Without direction, churches “dive in and shoot in the dark. But RBP gives them a scope and sequence from the twos and threes on up to adults that . . . they can grab ahold of and run with.” RBP meets the challenge of teaching people at every age with a breadth and arrangement that ensures everyone from the youngest child to the oldest adult hears and studies the whole “counsel of God.”

Bible and doctrinal content

For many years, Regular Baptist Press has published materials that take students of every age through the entire Bible. As Ross points out, “not every teacher in Sunday School is a Bible scholar. A lot of teachers teach what’s in the curriculum.” If that curriculum emphasizes only one part of the Bible, contains doctrinal or factual errors, or gives unclear presentations of the gospel message, teachers may not be aware and may teach the lessons anyway. But with RBP curriculum, churches know they’re getting Biblical, doctrinally sound material that is carefully designed to cover the whole Bible.

When it comes to Christian education curriculum, RBP is tied to its doctrinal statement. “And,” says Ross, “it’s an in-depth doctrinal statement. You won’t find that in a lot of publishers. Other publishers have a very general doctrinal statement.” RBP, though, also articulates Baptist theology.

Alan reiterates what Ross says: “We are guided by our doctrinal statement. If you use RBP material, you have to be confronted with sound doctrine. . . .

“If you look at the other major publishers, some of them will say right on their websites that they don’t offer a lot of commentary; they don’t offer a lot of application, because what they want is for your teachers to take your particular church’s doctrine and insert it. To me, that’s a danger. . . .

“One of the neatest things about RBP is that, like it or not, in our curriculum we do offer commentary; we do offer sound doctrine based on the Word of God and our baptistic heritage and history.”

Alan also added, “If you look at some of the larger publishers, sometimes the plan of salvation is not really direct. RBP is very direct. We are not afraid to state that salvation is obtained in only one way—the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, accepted only by faith through God’s grace.”

Resources for teaching methods

Church publishers are often criticized for having too much style and no substance. At the other extreme, some publishers are known for their uninspiring, facts-only content. As a result, some children grow up thinking the Christian life is all fun and games, or they grow up believing that doctrine has no practical value. “There needs to be a balance,” says Ross. “Some curriculum goes too far one way.”

RBP materials are age appropriate and are designed to be educationally enjoyable at each level. The lessons are educationally sound, as well as doctrinally sound. Dallas relates that when he became the children’s pastor at his church and had just chosen RBP curriculum, “I brought it back [to my church] and introduced it to our teachers. I said, ‘This is what we’re going to be using.’ I think every one of the teachers we have there—they’re still using it at the church—like the material.”

When teachers read their manuals carefully, they learn about their students’ needs and characteristics, choose between various teaching methods, discover ways to involve their students in the learning process, and encounter many resources open to them, including times of formal training.

RBP Regional Managers—Tech Support for Churches

While RBP offers valuable curriculum, helpful and encouraging training seminars, and additional resources, sometimes you just need someone to talk to informally. That’s where the regional managers come in. If you have a question about RBP curriculum, how to encourage teachers, how to train teachers, or how to make an educational plan, please contact the regional manager for your region. That’s what he’s there for.

Alan Wilson explains what he and the other regional managers can do for a church: “I’ve stayed over and observed a Sunday School and walked through and given an objective evaluation. . . . I even do a workshop on treating teachers as VIPs—what the things are behind the scenes or even before they start teaching that we could put in place that will help a church’s educators see what a privilege teaching is. It’s tough to lift Christian education up and put it in its appropriate spot. Instead of teachers looking at teaching with the attitude, ‘I’m a warm body. I’ll do it if no one else will do it,’ they need to see it as the privilege it is. When they do, it affects their preparation, their creativity, their love for the class, their anticipation—all those things.”

The regional managers can help your church with training, planning, and organization. They have contact with other churches, so they have seen what works, what’s effective. They can give your church advice and even provide a template of what to think about, what to use, and how to implement it in your church. They truly are church education specialists! If your Sunday School or Christian education ministry has a glitch, you know who to call—Alan, Bob, Dallas, Ross, or Tenny!

Jonita Barram is an editor for Regular Baptist Press.