God calls us to pass our faith onto the next generation. And every generation hears the Word in a different way. What worked in the past does not always translate into a method that works now. Today, a child who doesn’t relate to the world through the use of words is lost. We could lose a whole generation because we have not been able to tap into the way that a particular generation learns.

What do your Sunday school classrooms look like? Are your rooms filled with tables and chairs because you need writing surfaces for the workbooks? In such a traditional Sunday school, teachers are recruited for a whole year to teach a different lesson each week. Each lesson builds on the knowledge learned from the last weeks. The Sunday school is oriented to a verbal-linguistic approach where there is reading, writing, listening and responding. A craft may be thrown in; most likely, it is not a keeper. Teachers often feel that they have to stay within the constraints of the printed lesson; they aren’t given permission to use their own natural talents. The special talents of the congregation are not brought into the classroom. There has to be a better way to pass the faith onto the next generation!

What does a Workshop Rotation Model Sunday school look like? Classrooms are workshops, often designed to look like the setting for that workshop. The Storytelling workshop might look like a Bedouin encampment. The Video room might look like a video production studio. The Puppetry workshop has a puppet stage and puppets. The Drama workshop has a standard set of biblical costumes.

It’s Sunday morning. The children in Sunday school are learning about the Lord’s Prayer. The 1st graders may be in the gym modeling attitudes about prayer with their physical bodies. The 2nd graders may be in the Bedouin Encampment, they are creating a sacred space for prayer and meditation. The 3rd graders are creating contemporary skits to answer the question: "What is God’s will?" The 4th graders are in the kitchen, learning about the food pyramid and how God provides us with our daily bread. The 5th graders are in Puppetry, creating puppet shows that resolve temptation issues. And the 6th graders are in the Video Production room, making a film of a dialogue between God and a prayer group.

For four weeks, these groups will learn about the Lord’s Prayer. The teachers stay in the same workshop, teaching a different group each week. The classes are the ones that rotate from one workshop to another. This is great for the children. Regular attendance reinforces the lesson; irregular attendance does not breed confusion, as each lesson stands on its own. They are learning the lesson in a variety of formats; if one approach does not capture the understanding of the child, perhaps an approach during the following weeks will.¹

This model for Sunday school radically alters the way that you recruit teachers. First of all, the time commitment is only one month. Second, you have the incredible opportunity to match a talent, hobby, or spiritual gift to a particular workshop. Your woodworker will jump at the chance to help a class build the Ark of the Covenant in the Wilderness Unit. You can match the camcorder enthusiast with the Video Live! workshop. The cooks in the congregation will readily volunteer to lead an Eat Your Way Through the Bible workshop. The gardener will enjoy helping the children infuse seeds into handmade paper in a Created by the Spirit workshop. Worm-growers (we have two at Glenview United Methodist Church) will gladly share their story and mini-farm as they teach about the Heifer Project in relation to the Feeding of the 5000. There is no end to avenues that open when you start to look at matching the talents of your church to the passing of the faith.

Some people worry about the continuity that may be lost with this model, the opportunity for one teacher to really get to know the children through the course of the year. The answer: Shepherds. Let the teachers do the teaching, making a one-month commitment and focusing on the lesson. Shepherds are recruited for the full year. They do not teach, but are the nurturing component of the Workshop Rotation Model. They may be an extra set of hands on Sunday morning, but more importantly, they get to know the children. They send birthday cards, Christmas cards, Easter cards, "I heard that your hamster died" cards, "We missed you" cards. Because they have been in the classroom from the start, the Shepherds are the ones that make the connections between the shared concepts from one workshop to another within a unit, and from one unit to another.

An Example of the Workshop Rotation Model in Action

At Glenview Community Church, our first year focused on Tests of Faith. We overheard the following conversation:

Mom: Where were you today, Tommy?
Tommy: In the gym.
Mom: Have you been there before?
Tommy: Yeah. I was there in January when we learned about John the Baptist and we did (x, y, z). Today we learned about Peter and we did (a, b, c). And you know what, Mom? They both had a test of faith.

How many of our children can even remember what they did three months ago, let alone make a conceptual connection between lessons?

Cornerstones curriculum allows you to custom fit the curriculum to your own church. You design the program for the number of workshops you want to run. You match the individual talents in your church with the skills needed in a particular lesson. No more buying workbooks for every child on the registry. No more using workshops that don’t fit the talents in your church. You choose what workshops you want.


¹ This concept is based on the educational research done by Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences. We all have different ways that we interpret our world. If we insist on teaching in only one of the eight intelligences, we lose the opportunity to pass the faith onto the next generation. (Read more about Gardner's work here.)