How to Prepare an Engaging Sunday School Lesson

Are you looking for tips on how to prepare an engaging Sunday school lesson? If so, you've come to the right place. Preparing a Sunday school lesson can be a daunting task, but with the right approach, it can be a rewarding experience. In this article, we'll discuss the key steps to take when preparing a Sunday school lesson, from researching the main passage of Scripture to creating an engaging discussion. We'll also provide tips on how to avoid common mistakes and create a participatory audience in your Sunday school class. Start early when preparing your Sunday school lesson.

Read and reread the main passage of Scripture that you are going to teach. Determine a main truth that you want to teach and that students will receive. Think about the needs of your students and how best to meet them. Don't just give a boring theology lecture or a flannel graphic for first-graders.

If you give a lecture to a 13-year-old child, they'll ignore you in 10 seconds. Even if you have 3 points, you should be able to summarize your idea in a single statement. Don't print 10 pages of notes to read to your students. It is possible to teach a Hermeneutics 101 course in just one hour with the best online resources that people can use to facilitate their study. Join the more than 180,000 church leaders who receive our free resources weekly. It is increasingly normal for churches to write their own Sunday school lessons in these cases.

You can serve in one of these churches, you can even be the one who writes them. If so, you've probably noticed that while there's no shortage of excellent and useful Sunday school classes available, by comparison, there's very little material made to help people experiment with writing classes for themselves. Now, let's see how to execute each of these steps in a practical way while writing your next Sunday school lesson. Provide a quick summary of how the teaching part could be structured. Two or three main titles are presented, along with the specific verses of the Bible that are discussed.

The drafting remains succinct, parallel in its construction and anchored to the real content of the texts being studied. Teachers should be able to see at a glance the general direction the lesson will take. Preparing for the lesson is the heart of the entire biblical teaching enterprise. This is where you'll spend most of your time reading, researching, and formulating your thoughts on the meaning of the biblical text in prayer. This is also where all your efforts to ideate, exegesis and research come together in one cohesive place. In this section, build on the observations made above and explain the general process of completing the various sections of the outline that you use to write Sunday school lessons for adults.

At first glance, it may seem that the effort follows an orderly and simple path. However, it is rarely simple and always logical. Therefore, while it involves considerable skill, a creative, dynamic and artistic process is often present. For example, sometimes you may decide to take a deductive or top-down approach. This involves starting with a general idea of the objective or outline and using it as a starting point to delve into the details of the text being exegated and investigated.

On the contrary, at other times you can opt for an inductive or bottom-up method. Here, the process first delves into the details of the passage and from there addresses the broader categories just mentioned. As for the lesson outline, typical errors include not having sectional headings or having too many. The absence of titles suggests that the lesson lacks a clear organization. On the contrary, an overly detailed outline can lead to a lesson that is fragmented in your organization and interrupted in your flow.

The remedy is to arrive at two or three main points that are convincing in their writing and lucid in their connection with each other. In addition, the outline should allow students to understand the trajectory of the lesson almost immediately. Achieving an engaging Sunday school culture in your church boils down to following a few key principles about public participation. During decades of writing Sunday school lessons for adults, it has been discovered that about five inquiries is the optimal number for the discussion question section. If you apply childish principles to the design or content of your Sunday school lesson, they will ignore you because they feel condescending to. For example, as indicated in the previous section, one or more parallel passages of Scripture can be examined to clarify the meaning of a biblical text, provide information necessary to resolve interpretation problems and increase thematic emphasis on your main passage of Sunday school lesson. It's something you can do on your own and in addition you can adapt lessons more personally to children in your Sunday School class.

Master these skills and you'll have mastered basics of creating participatory audience in Sunday school. Not only do these topics provide stimulating conversation but they will probably attract more people come to Sunday school hear what Bible says about these important topics. If you bring dignified attitude to your Sunday school lesson you'll have dying Sunday school ministry. Increase your Sunday school attendance from loyal few enthusiastic lively community engaged students. This material follows biblical sequence International Sunday School Lesson (ISSL) systematically delves into main biblical books topics. Each these objectives could constitute broad thematic category which base series Sunday school lessons.

Increase your Sunday school attendance from loyal few enthusiastic lively community engaged students master these skills have mastered basics creating participatory audience in Sunday school.

Terence Wedgeworth
Terence Wedgeworth

I love the Bible and love sharing God's truth with others! I dream of being a full-time evangelist, but for now it's Bible college and blogging for me. I also teach 4th grade Sunday School at my church. Click here to see my kids Bible lessons.