Sunday School musings

I helped out with a Sunday School class today. This is the first time I've done this in years. It's also the first time in years I've been in a room with that many kids under the age of 6. (Hats off to full-time lower elementary and preschool teachers.)

I like little kids. I like the requests for help because they haven't learned how to do it themselves yet, and the stories they tell, and the casual unconcern with which they admit you into their lives (sometimes Chloe's parents stand on her bed to change lightbulbs).

I wish time with these kids wasn't a trade-off situation, but it is. I love adult Sunday School classes. I love the participation and the intellectual stimulation. I still miss college classes, and the adult Sunday School classes are the closest I come to that. As I can't be two places at once, I am only in the children's class now. (I wish Sunday School followed the Harvest Time model of having a leaders' class at a separate time. To work with kids AND to have a forum to keep interacting with the adults...that would be ideal. Sandra, are you reading this?)

Being a Sunday School teacher also means markedly less time socializing in the hallways. I'm okay with the part where I am there to help guide the kids to their classroom. The part where I wait at the classroom for twenty minutes after class...that's the part where I need to watch my attitude. 

I'm a punctual person, as a rule, although Harvest's disregard for clocks has sort of beaten me down a bit. But I still believe in respecting other people by respecting their time, and it can be hard for me to cultivate kind feelings towards my brothers and sisters in Christ who don't come to pick up their kids after their class is over, instead of using the Sunday School classroom for all the free babysitting potential it holds. I have trouble not thinking, "You go home and sit with family. I go home and sit alone. Can you please let me talk to a few people in the hallway for five minutes?" 

Then again, I guess maybe sometimes the parents with so many kids wish they could go home and sit alone, too. 

In my time with the children's Sunday School ministry, I am going to focus on what it means to serve for the sake of Christ. I am going to practice putting these children (and yes, their social butterfly parents, too) before myself. On simultaneously disappearing so that Christ appears, and on revealing myself in some of those vulnerable places I try to pretend don't exist. (Like the place that really liked having people stop by to say hello to me as I stood in the doorway waiting for parents to show up today. I appreciated that a lot.) I'm giving thanks for people who have done this sort of work for years, even though their efforts were often taken for granted. And that's just for starters.

It's going to be good.