Spiritual Musings: Reforming a perishing church

Haven't been blogging for awhile, reason being I simply just can't find the time to do so. But this is one post I must get off my chest - it is something that has bothered me for sometime this year (and perhaps the past few years).

Now those who know me will know that I come from a traditional evangelical church and that I currently serve as a Sunday school teacher in the Chinese ministry. I have been attending the Mandarin congregation since young and have found good friends in the course of the years (interestingly though, most of my best pals have left church, for various reasons I will not elaborate).

I have been teaching Sunday school in church for about four years (and in the process challenged myself to improve my Mandarin). During those years, it has become increasingly evident that the Sunday school education ministry has to reform herself or die a natural (or rather, unnatural) death. The reason being that we are unable to penetrate the hearts and minds of our Christian children, thus leaving them virtually a non-existent foundation of Christian truths upon which they are able to stand upon.

During these years, it has been my great privilege and blessing to have encountered many good Christian brothers and sisters outside of the four walls of my church - many of whom have shared similar sentiments and the burden of preaching and living out the Christian faith in a hostile world.

Nevertheless, the challenges of trying to enact changes within the Sunday school ministry go on. Over the years, I have attempted to stretch the contents of the current curricular, in the belief and conviction that my students are intelligent and are capable of comprehending deep and profound truths. Sometimes, it is agonizing to see well-meant folks speaking to these youths (some of them straight As students) in a manner that make a mockery of their abilities. Somehow, I cannot imagine the early church fathers - from Paul to Augustine - to folks like Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Whitfield, Jon Edwards, Kuyyper, Schaeffer etc... ever doing this. Whatever happened to evangelical theology???

Right now, our congregation is going through a difficult period due to tensions with the English-speaking congregation (for reasons I will not go into). All I can and will say is that these reasons - valid or otherwise - say more about the attitudes of the people in church towards their faith than the rightness or wrongness of the explanations themselves.

Whatever the outcome may be (of which I am probably in no position to decide on), I will continue to strive for the excellence of the Sunday school system. Already the Word of God is bearing fruit - slowly but surely. Next year, I intend to embark on a year-long (if not longer) course with some of the university folks in church where I hope to explore with them the Word of God - and its relevancy upon the world we live in. There are tough - but exciting - times ahead... there is much that is yet to be done.