Since we are a rather small church, the potential membership for church school from Grade 1 through Junior High is only seventeen persons, so we offered no more than two learning centers each Sunday. On occasion, we used learning centers for the entire hour; other times we combined a classroom situation and learning centers, or used the classroom situation for the entire hour. The learning centers provided a variety of types of activity, from baking bread to learning Bible verses, and from making Shalom stoles and flags to learning Shalom songs in a music center.

Developed to contend with our summer "weekending" and "vacationing," Summer Sunday School presents programs that are complete packages in themselves. You aren't lost if you miss a Sunday or two, but there is a continuity of theme so that regular participants don't feel like they are just bouncing randomly from topic to topic.

The best resource around is to connect with sundaysoftware.com. Neil MacQueen, author of Computers, Kids and Christian Education, is the owner of that company and he's a wealth of info. He and his team carefully search for all the best software for kids and youth

In the summer of 1995, I called together a task group to formulate Educational Ministry Goals for our congregation. This process reflected our concern for how well we were doing in "making disciples of Jesus Christ." The task group believed that the goal of Educational Ministry was to fulfill the Great Commission of Jesus.

An example graphic of a curriculum checklist that can be used for the Sunday School curriculum by the Board of Education. Rate on a scale of: Y=Yes, it works, P=it's a possible match, N=No match, doesn't work