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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