Is Age Segregated Sunday School Biblical?

I think as a response to the FICM, it’s fair and thorough. Although, when we say something is ‘Biblical’, I usually think of the term as meaning that a practice is a directive of some kind. It’s certainly fair to say that age segregated classes are consistent with and not in contradiction to many Biblical principles.

I’m generally not a fan of age segregated classes, even though I think there is a place for them, as in “older women teaching younger women”. Where I become concerned is with the content of the classes and the teaching ability and spiritual maturity of the teachers.

Maybe that could be Part 4 - if churches want parents to put their kids in SS classes, and support various age segregated ministries, then use something besides Christian comic books as curriculum and the Warm Body Method to staff them.

Karen Campbell also has some good podcasts about the FIC movement, too. if you go to her site, the “podcasts” tab, then the appropriate choice on the menu.

Only got through 1 and 2… for what it’s worth, I think it has a lot of strength. I like the approach of working through the key term “biblical” as you intend it first. And church as family is an angle I haven’t seen attended to much in this debate.

Is interesting to me that when the NT talks about discipleship, the focus is by far on what goes on among gathered believers in the local church setting in their ministry to one another as believers, not as families (we just studied 1Cor.12 at church, as a recent example). You have a couple of direct instructions to parents (with home life apparently in view) and that’s it.

I think we need to take into account authorial intent. When Paul addresses an epistle to a church, it makes sense that he would focus on church issues. IOW, I don’t think we should read too much into his focus on the church’s ministry to believers, as if by doing so, he was placing more importance on the church ‘family’ as opposed to individual families. We are siblings in Christ by virtue of adoption into the family of God, not into the family of a local church.

We have spheres of authority and responsibility that overlap in places, but I don’t think any of them should supercede each other. Beginning with the authority of the individual, to parental authority- as children and then as adults, the relationship of husband and wife, obedience to gov’t, employer/employee, the leadership of the church… there are boundaries for all of these relationships.

I think it’s fair that the FIC has gone to the extreme of drawing lines too deeply, and trying to make them ‘law’. And not everyone concerned about the preponderance of age-segregated ministry is a cheerleader for the FIC. As I do with many people and organizations who publish their ideas and positions, I glean what I find resonant and useful, and leave behind twaddle and extremism.

The epistles are written to churches and so… a church-life emphasis, yes.

But when it speaks on the topic of “how to grow as a believer,” it consistently points us back to church life. To put it another way, the NT is conspicuously missing any indication that church is second to family in the dynamic of Christian living.

… and very strong on our identity as “members” of a living body.

So, does the NT teach that church is more important than family? No. But it certainly does not teach that in worship and discipleship the church is the servant of the family or secondary to it.

Of course, some churches abuse or waste their role… filling up the calendar with all sorts of activities of dubious value and generally getting in the way of healthy family life. I share some of the FIC movement’s chagrin at that sort of thing. But the solution is not to develop a warped ecclesiology. The best churches understand that nurturing strong families is very near the top of what they ought to be doing for members of the body (without neglecting the needs of singles and those whose families are beyond their reach).

I think the problem is that so many churches have Sunday School because they DO blindly follow tradition. This lends credence to the FICM position.

I’ve been a Sunday School Superintendent in churches that wanted me to purchase the cheapest curriculum I could find, or just put stuff together myself, with flannelgraph that was so old they were brittle and shedding their backing. Their goal was for the kids to be happy so the parents would be happy. It didn’t really matter what was done to make the kids happy either.

The FICM does employ the baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach, which is not a true solution, but there are enough parents who are up to here with churches that use SS and Junior church as glorified babysitting instead of a true discipleship opportunity. I think part of the answer is to offer a rebuttal of the FICM, and then to admonish churches who use SS to do so Biblically as well.