A fresh take on Sunday school

Osier Mennonite adapts American curriculum for its own use

Walk into the Osier Mennonite Church Sunday school wing in the small prairie town just north of Saskatoon and you might find more colour than a coral reef Bright blues and greens, harvestinspired orange and fresh popsicle lime greet the students who eagerly come each week to learn the Bible using the "workshop rotation model."

Coming out of the U.S. in the 1990s, the model was developed by two people from a Presbyterian church in Illinois who felt that traditional methods kept producing the same frustrating results: bored students, declining attendance, and costly and under- used curricula. While brainstorming on a simple flipchart, Neil Mac Queen and Melissa Hansche worked out a system to teach Bible stories through interactive storytelling together with repetition, using ideas from art and music. Their original plan involved teaching the story via art, drama, music, games, puppets and computers over a five-week cycle.

Osler Mennonites education committee was looking for a solution to the church's own dilemma - dropping attendance and difficulty attracting teachers - when it discovered the American model.

"We'd been losing students for the last 15 years," says Chris Buhler, Christian education coordinator. "We had to do something before the program couldn't run any more."

The committee first looked around to see what other churches were doing. Buhler had heard of the workshop rotation model being used in mainline churches. Together with other education committee members, he went to visit an Anglican church in Saskatoon to see how it all worked. The Osier group decided to adapt the model for its own purposes basing it on a three- week cycle instead of five.

"We have to write our own curriculum," says Buhler, adding that lessons on the Internet exist but they are not written from a Mennonite perspective.

The Osler Christian Education Committee also planned on using the gifts and resources that already existed in their congregation and the church got on board quickly. Last summer, members remodelled several classrooms to make the new program possible, including renovating a coffee/ fellowship room for the adults. The total cost for the new venture was about the same as ordering the church's former teaching material, notes pastor Gordon Allaby

Each week the Sunday school hour begins with a short worship time, prayer and snack. Then children are sent to their workshop station for 45 minutes. They are divided up by grades from 1 to 6. Teenagers in the church help with the Sunday school.

The response so far has been positive.

"Children are dragging their parents to church," says Buhler, who noted that attendance has increased by 18 percent.

Melanie Boldt has two children, aged eight and 10. She, too, has noticed an increased willingness to attend Sunday School. "The variety of activities in the rotation keeps their interest," she says. "It's not repetitive to talk about the same story for three weeks, because each week the kids are doing a different activity and delving a little deeper into the issues and characters of the story."

[Sidebar]

In the bright and friendly environs of Osier Mennonite Church's redesigned Sunday school classrooms, WiIf Buhler engages children in the learning process as they study Bible stories through hands-on creations.

[Author Affiliation]

BY KARIN FEHDERAU

Saskatchewan Correspondent