Matthew Stuckey here and I want to make a quick video addressing the topic of
Sunday school and junior church and children's ministries and I wanted to
talk to you about why we don't have a Sunday school at our churches here at
Verity Baptist. We don't have a children's ministry. We don't have a
junior church and I want to talk about it because that actually makes us pretty
unique not just as a Baptist Church but especially here in the Philippines where
children's ministries are very big. A couple things that you need to understand
is that especially on the the mission field so to speak or churches in foreign
countries you know children are very curious when they see somebody who's a
foreigner and quite honestly our church could easily trip one size overnight if
we chose to just by introducing children's ministries because whenever
I'm out soul winning I have 20 kids that will kind of follow me and everything
and I could easily just take lots of pictures and say well look at all these
kids that I'm reaching and everything like that but it'd be very misleading
and I know a lot of missionaries do this but I believe that's pretty
misleading because of the fact you know a lot of these kids are just too young
to understand the gospel and we don't have a children's ministry and there's
many reasons why. Now to understand why we don't have a children's ministry one
thing we need to understand is the actual origin of Sunday school because I
think this is something most people are not really aware of and you're not gonna
really hear people claim that the origin of Sunday school is in the Bible. I've
never actually heard that because you don't really see an example of it in the
Bible but Sunday school actually gets its name Sunday school because when it
originated they weren't learning these Bible stories they weren't coloring in
Noah's Ark they were actually learning math and reading and history and they
were just learning these key things of actual school to give them an education.
Here's an art here's from an article online it says it is important to
realize that Sunday schools were originally literally schools they were
places where where poor children could learn to read the Sunday school movement
began in Britain in the 1780s the Industrial Revolution had resulted in
many children spending all week long working in factories Christian
philanthropists wanted to free these children from a life of illiteracy well
into the 19th century working hours were long the first modest legislative
restrictions came in 1802 this resulted in limiting the number of hours a child
could work per day to 12 this limit was not lowered again until 1844 moreover
Saturday was part of the regular workweek Sunday therefore was the only
available time for these children to gain gain some education and so this was
in Britain in the 18th century and there was a lot of kids that were very young
kids working in factories doing very dangerous jobs working Monday through
Saturday basically 72 hours and they weren't getting a chance to actually you
know learn to read and write and basic math and without those things they
really had no opportunity in life to actually develop a career that could
really you know help support a family and really be successful in life and so
there were certain churches that saw this and they said you know what we want
to give these kids an opportunity in life and so on Sundays they would
actually teach kids how to learn to read and write and math for several hours
before church actually started then these kids would actually stay for
church service as well now I am not personally saying that we would have
done that as a church in the 18th century if we were in that situation and
you know what I'm sure there's a lot of kids here who who might not be great at
reading and writing and stuff like that this is not a ministry that we're gonna
take on I'm just explaining to you what they actually did in the 18th century so
actually what they were doing was actually teaching them how to learn to
read and write and math so that's what Sunday school is but what happened is
that a lot of churches saw that this was a successful way to bring a lot of
children to church and to boost their attendance so what they did is they
started to follow this model but instead of actually teaching math and reading
and writing it kind of morphed into just teaching fun games and kind of goofy
songs that are not the old-fashioned hymns and so it changed from Sunday
school to just kind of Sunday entertainment hour and you know there's
just a lot of problems with this so that's kind of the origin of Sunday
school and so the origin doesn't come from the Bible which is why I
immediately would just be like well why would we do this as a church now some
people would say well just because it's not in the Bible doesn't mean that we
can't do it because they say well the online ministry that's not in the Bible
and yet we have an online ministry and so you're a hypocrite well here's the
thing though the online ministry is not something that was even possible 2,000
years ago so just because you don't see the online ministry in the Bible doesn't
mean that the online ministry is wrong it's actually a ministry we're able to
take on which is a great blessing to our church which is kind of in addition just
to our normal church services that doesn't get away get in the way of our
normal church but it's an added thing that we can do but the same but here's
the thing with Sunday school that is something they were fully capable of
doing 2,000 years ago if they wanted to but you never see Jesus introducing this
and you never actually see it Sunday school or junior church or anything like
that it says here in the article the English Anglican evangelical Robert
Rikers was the key promoter of the movement it soon spread to America as
well so this just spread all over because it was a way to boost the actual
number of people in church so a couple thoughts on this of why we don't do a
Sunday school number one if we had a Sunday school and these children's
ministries where the parents are not there and you separate the kids from
adults you know what that is actually gonna make it a very dangerous situation
for those children it would actually basically produce an atmosphere where
it's gonna be something where pedophiles and creeps and perverts would want to
come into the church you have to understand that pedophiles and these
weirdos they go to places where they have an opportunity to defile children
and if you're separating children from their parents where there's no
supervision no video to know what's going on what it's gonna actually do is
create an atmosphere of these weird sexual deviants wanting to come into
church because they have an opportunity to defile children and I want you to
realize Baptist churches are oftentimes the ones guilty of setting up
atmospheres where children end up getting molested it's very common in
independent Baptist churches because they are very common in promoting the
children's ministries and I understand the appeal of wanting to have a
children's ministry because we could honestly end up tripling our attendance
and it would look really good as we're doing missionary reports of having
hundreds of people at church but it's going to create an atmosphere it's gonna
be very dangerous to those children now you say well brother Stuckey you could
provide you know supervision and everything like that make sure to keep
it safe and everything like that well I want you to understand though in the
Bible the children are actually hearing the same preaching as the adults so I
don't believe we should have a separate children's ministry you know if you say
well what forget about Sunday school what about junior church during the
service well the thing is I believe everyone should be hearing the same
preaching otherwise it's kind of like a separate church altogether and the
atmosphere with these churches these junior churches is you make it fun and
entertaining because a lot of the kids are gonna be pretty rowdy and they don't
have parental supervision to make sure that they stay disciplined and so it
says in Nehemiah 8 verse 3 and he read therein before the street that was
before the Watergate from the morning until midday before the men and the
women and those that could hear those that could understand and the ears of
all the people were attentive on to the book of the law so what we see in Nehemiah
chapter 8 is that all that could understand so men and women and children
they could hear what's being preached and the reality is those kids can
understand more than you realize and so even if they don't understand everything
even if they're not saved yet they can still benefit from the preaching in the
old-fashioned hymns because that's just teaching them what church is supposed to
be like it's not surprising that we're seeing people grow up and go to these
non-denominational mega churches because they grew up with the rock type music
and this entertaining atmosphere and they're being taught at a young age that
churches for entertainment it's not for actually learning the Word of God it
says in Matthew 19 verse 14 but Jesus said suffer little children and forbid
them not to come unto me for if such is the kingdom of heaven so Jesus told his
apostles and his followers as they were trying to forbid the children don't
forbid the children now I've heard people quote this to try to justify
Sunday school saying we should bring in as many kids as possible but I want you
to realize you know it's actually misleading because when they say that
they actually do have the children in a separate room from the actual church
service so they're not actually fully fully following that themselves the
other thing you need to realize is you're often seeing Jesus preached to
areas or people are gathering and it's in outdoor places he's preaching the
Word of God they're doing lots of soul winning so when you see all these
children that are surrounding Jesus that doesn't mean it's a structured organized
church service inside of a building meeting at a set time whenever I'm going
soul winning I have lots of kids that are surrounding me and I talk to the
kids and you know I say hello to them and everything like that and I've
preached the gospel to many of them and our church members preach the gospel to
them even understanding that most of them are probably too young to
understand this so that would be a more accurate situation or more accurate
application of what's happening in Matthew 19 but if you want to say that
that's actually a church service I want you to realize that these Baptist
churches are separating the children from the adults so they're not actually
applying Matthew chapter 19 verse 14 because they are forbidding the children
to come under the main service you say well why are these Baptist churches not
allowing children during the main service and you say well what would be
wrong with just bringing lots of children and having them in the main
service you say I understand what you're saying brother Stuckey we don't want to
give them you know kind of rock music and an entertaining atmosphere they need
the same preaching here's the problem though you know children if they do not
have parental supervision are going to be basically disruptive we've had
children young children visit our church and quite honestly I had to stop
preaching a few times just to tell them hey you know you need to be quiet and
what ended up happening is members of our church instead of getting to listen
getting to listen to the Word of God being preached they basically were
babysitters during the main church service and if you're gonna keep a bunch
of kids in this church service without some sort of supervision whether it's
you know an older brother whether it's parents or whatever if you do that what
ends up happening is you're gonna need a lot of babysitters at your church the
problem is they're not getting to hear the Word of God preached but see what
the Bible teaches in Deuteronomy chapter 6 is that all of us are responsible for
our own kids and what we personally do is when we run into kids out so winning
that want to come to our church what I always will say is well you know where
do your parents live where do you live so we can talk to your parents because
we would love to reach the parents of these kids and they could bring the
children to church with them but the reality is if we bring in these children
without parents we're gonna have to have members of our church that are
gonna have to supervise them and it also creates an atmosphere where pedophiles
might want to come into the church because they're seeing well there's all
these kids without any supervision here's an opportunity to defile these
young children so this is why we personally don't have Sunday school at
our church and it's something that we'll never have and I understand the benefits
and the appeal because you could skyrocket your church attendance but my
goal is to not is not to have the biggest church in the world my goal is
to just try to follow what the Bible says now let me just say this in passing
that there are plenty of churches that have a Sunday school and junior church
and children's ministries that are aside from the main service that are separated
from the adults and they choose to do that I'm not saying all of those churches
are bad churches many of them are good churches that are reaching a lot of
people and there are children that are reached through these children's
ministries so some kids do end up getting saved but me personally I don't
see that as a biblical method I believe when we look at the verses and the
principles in the Bible not only do we never see Sunday school in the Bible not
only do we realize that the origin was in the 18th century not in the first
century but you know I just don't see those principles and I believe it would
cause more problems than good even though it might look good when you're
seeing pictures and things such as that so that's why we choose not to have
Sunday school anyways thank you and God bless