What is your strategy?

Arthur Flake had a philosophical belief that all people need Sunday School because all people need to study the Bible.¹ The churches in each community should enlarge the Sunday School by enrolling lost people, which would give them an opportunity to be taught the Bible. This belief provided the foundation for the development of his five-step plan for efficiently enlarging the Sunday School.

Should churches still try to know the people in their community and through an ongoing process identify and create strategies to invite them to attend?

Should churches still train and equip the volunteers to effectively teach the Bible?

Should churches still provide the resources needed to teach a Bible study and have resources for the participants?

Should churches still grade their Sunday School so the classes are similar in age or life stage?

Should the church have a system that they maintain for reaching out to the lost and ministering to those currently attending Sunday School?

These five questions are the same five Arthur Flake introduced to Southern Baptists during the first half of the Twentieth Century. He provided a repeatable formula that mirrored his professional career as a salesman. He marketed a floor plan that could be repeated in any community by any church that desired to provide a Sunday School.

The question today is, what is your strategy for marketing your Sunday School or small group ministry? Who is your constituency (the people that could attend)? What opportunities are you providing to equip the teachers? How are you utilizing the resources, from curriculum to space, the ways that you are? Why have you graded or grouped the people in your church into the classes or groups you offer each week? When and how are you maintaining an outreach/inreach connecting point for those that could attend or have been absent?

The wording may have been tweaked over the decades, but the foundational principles remain and have to be employed for a church to have a successful Sunday School.

I too have been a salesman like Arthur Flake, and you cannot bring home a paycheck if you are not willing to hit the pavement to produce closed sales. I believe the principles of Arthur Flake have remained excellent for the local church because of the solid leadership and hard work ethic of his generation. He worked a strategy through the sweat of his brow in a local church that produced results. Each one of us as ministers has to decide what will be our strategy and then commit to work the plan. The mandate to reach and make disciples should propel us to develop a strategy that could reach the most people with the gospel and disciple them. Take a moment today and reflect on your strategy and personal commitment to fulfill the work. Read Matthew 28:18-20 and begin to chart a course that engages the people that could be reached and invited to join the journey.

¹           Arthur Flake, “A Catalog of Manuscripts and Documents [of] the Original Works of Arthur Flake,” 1919, TMs (photcopy), LifeWay Archives, Nashville.