Sunday School – Return and Report

Last week I ran a Sunday School idea by you folks.  Now I want to tell you what we did and how it went.

What we did

I split everyone into 8 groups.  Each group had a discussion topic (some groups were duplicates):

• the wedding feast at Cana
• Nicodemus
• Scourging the moneychangers in the temple
• The woman at the well

Each group had a few discussion questions specific to their story, a list of general discussion prompts, and a clipboard and paper and pen for taking notes.   There was 15 minutes allotted for group discussions, 10 minutes alloted for sharing with the whole class what their group talked about, 20 minutes for a class discussion of the the Beatitudes (plus a demo), and 10 minutes for anyone to share any spiritual insight.  (This was all fuzzy in my head.  As you might imagine, those time limits were too ambitious in practice).

The Discussion Prompts

I had some specific oddball questions for each topic to get people approaching the topic from a different angle.  For example, with the wedding feast at Cana

–what is the significance of Christ having the servants fill the vessels?

–what is the significance of the vessels being ritual vessels?

-what is the significance of them being filled to the brim?

Or, with the scourging

–why did Christ make his own scourge, what does it mean?

Then I had a bunch of general discussion prompts.  My goal was to get people thinking about these familiar stories in a novel way, potentially allowing for better inspiration.  I was pretty pleased with them.

What is the spiritual message?

What is the doctrinal message?

Is there a temporal lesson or a practical insight?

What does this story tell us about the past?

What does it tell us about the present (liken it unto us)?

Is there any way this story could be a type or shadow of Christ’s future?

Is there any way this story can point us to events that will happen in our future?

What is the physical element of this story?

What is the wisdom in this story?

What is the social element in this story, what are the relationships?

What does this story tell us about our relationship and Christ’s relationship with the Father?

Think about the teachings in the Proclamation on the Family.  Are there any connections you can make?

If you treat this story as a parable or a metaphor, what is the symbolism?  What would the people, things, and events in the story represent symbolically?

How it went

The discussion went about 20 minutes and I had to cut it off.  The groups talking about their discussions, and people wanting to respond to other groups’ messages, took about another 20 minutes.  I had to cut that off also.  That left us no time for the Beatitudes since I had promised them time at the end to share any particular insights or spiritual experiences.  Luckily, most of what people wanted to talk about in that time was the Beatitudes.

I was hoping that the unusual discussion prompts would result in some unusual insights, but they did not.  It was the same general moral and spiritual uplift we would have gotten normally (which is good), with a few wrinkles.  However, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and really threw themselves into their groups.

But nothing makes up for missing out on the Beatitudes.

I wish we had a whole year for the gospels and then another year for the rest of the New Testament.  It’s rich in doctrine, story, and aphorism.