Sunday School Curriculum Options

[mike]

What options exist for adult Sunday School curriculum that are conservative Anabaptist-friendly? I'm aware only of CLP and Rod & Staff. Are there any other choices out there?

[JohnH]

My church publishes our own. Nearly all of the lessons would be non-controversial for other conservative Anabaptists.

[mike]

My church publishes our own. Nearly all of the lessons would be non-controversial for other conservative Anabaptists.

Is it available for purchase or preview online?

[JohnH]

My church publishes our own. Nearly all of the lessons would be non-controversial for other conservative Anabaptists.

Is it available for purchase or preview online?

It's mailed out via a standard subscription, so yes.

https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/1040-1040

I believe the price is $5 or $6 per year (mailed out quarterly). I will look at the exact price & address when I get home.

You could also stop by your nearest Holdeman establishment to "preview" it. There is one in Shippensburg.

[Neto]

We used to use CLE, then went to direct Scripture text study (going through a Bible book) for quite a few years. Later some of the men in the class I attend said that they would be more willing to take a turn teaching (leading discussion) if we used a 'Quarterly'. I don't know who chose it, but now we've been using one by David C. Cook for some years. I get frustrated with it at times, because sometimes they skip all over the place for a single lesson, or use a Scripture for a subject that seems to me to be outside the context of the original author's subject matter.

About a year ago our class discussed going back to CLE, but one man in particular said that the CLE lessons were harder to teach, so we stuck with this international standard quarterly plan. It IS KJV only as well, just like CLE.

I think it's fine to use non-Mennonite material as long as the participants are knowledgeable and vigilant. (We are all 'old men' who grew up in the church, except for one man, and he became a Christian in his early 20's, and is older than I.) Another 'advantage' of non-Mennonite material is that it's at least a bit like interacting with non-Mennonite Christians. So our discussions delve into doctrinal differences we would not encounter if we were using CLE, and this can provoke more thought than just studying material that is already very familiar to us. I would rather do direct Scripture study, but this also has the advantage that we study parts of the Scripture, and subjects, that are generally not chosen by 'our people'.

[JayP]

It is always well to recognize one’s own bias. It is no one’s fault, but the reality that NO ONE here uses Rod and Staff, yet the truly conservative Mennonite churches all do. Again, that does not make anyone a bad guy, it just reflects on how opinions across these boards are coming from a distinct subset of Anabaptism.

[Biblical Anabaptist]

We follow the R&S Adult curriculum, but do not use their quarterlies. At our last brothers' meeting, we discussed having some kind of books to use but no decision was made.

[ohio jones]

We used to use CLE, then went to direct Scripture text study (going through a Bible book) for quite a few years. Later some of the men in the class I attend said that they would be more willing to take a turn teaching (leading discussion) if we used a 'Quarterly'. I don't know who chose it, but now we've been using one by David C. Cook for some years. I get frustrated with it at times, because sometimes they skip all over the place for a single lesson, or use a Scripture for a subject that seems to me to be outside the context of the original author's subject matter.

CLP (CLE is homeschool, not Sunday school) most certainly skips all over the place for a single lesson, with some frequency. It's especially bad when a lesson titled "Restoring Order in the Church" has the text jumbled up. Restoring order in the text was apparently not a priority.

[Neto]

It is always well to recognize one’s own bias. It is no one’s fault, but the reality that NO ONE here uses Rod and Staff, yet the truly conservative Mennonite churches all do. Again, that does not make anyone a bad guy, it just reflects on how opinions across these boards are coming from a distinct subset of Anabaptism.

We used to use CLE, then went to direct Scripture text study (going through a Bible book) for quite a few years. Later some of the men in the class I attend said that they would be more willing to take a turn teaching (leading discussion) if we used a 'Quarterly'. I don't know who chose it, but now we've been using one by David C. Cook for some years. I get frustrated with it at times, because sometimes they skip all over the place for a single lesson, or use a Scripture for a subject that seems to me to be outside the context of the original author's subject matter.

CLP (CLE is homeschool, not Sunday school) most certainly skips all over the place for a single lesson, with some frequency. It's especially bad when a lesson titled "Restoring Order in the Church" has the text jumbled up. Restoring order in the text was apparently not a priority.

Maybe it was actually Rod & Staff we were using earlier. I didn't keep any of those old quarterlies. (When we were cleaning out my folks house, we had to deal with lots of boxes of books. Among them were my Dad's hardback SS teacher's manuals going way back into the 50's.) Obviously I cannot keep the names of these different materials straight in my mind. Does CLP stand for Christian Light Publications?

[barnhart]

We use only the scripture text going straight through a book of the Bible, often a chapter at a time but not always as some chapter breaks aren't according to thought logic. I have had similar frustrations as OJ and Neto with prepared studies, especially skipping around grabbing several verses with no regard for context.