Cashing out our Knowledge Tradition

Imagine the following: You pick up your newspaper and notice an article about policy decisions of your local public school. The school board announces, for the upcoming school year, that—while school will be in session—the school will not be testing the kids. It won’t be issuing report cards. It won’t be grading the students on the subject matter. And it won’t be holding back those who fail to comprehend the material.

What do you think?

I humbly suggest that parents in your school district, if this were to be announced, would be up in arms. And rightly so. There is a lot at stake in the education of our children. Grades and report cards are helpful markers of academic status. A supervised progression through material, each year building upon the last, is essential to continued success. These elements are indicators that we take learning seriously, and the subject matter seriously.

Now change the scenario just a bit, and I wonder if you’ll agree with me that we have a problem in many of our churches.

Instead of the announcement coming from the local school district, what if your pastor stood at the pulpit on Sunday morning and said the same about Sunday School?

My guess is that, in a great many of our churches (though some will fare better than others), this is the situation: we don’t test, we don’t grade, we don’t report back to the parents on the progress of children, and we don’t require a careful progression through the material of interest.

the rest