Don’t look for children’s Sunday school classes at Ridgewood Church in Port Arthur, Texas. And forget about scavenger hunts and water park trips: the youth ministry is no more.
Sound like a dying church?
No, it’s a family-integrated congregation, whose leaders wanted parents ”” rather than Sunday school teachers and youth ministers ”” to spiritually train their children. Driven by statistics about youth leaving church after high school, they’ve turned to the Bible as their sole educational text and shunned age-segregated structures.
Makes sense, I guess – if you consider Sunday School is only for children; and “churched” children at that. One of the criteria my wife and I have used in choosing a church when we have moved is whether or not there is an adult Sunday School with Biblical teaching (the kind you generally don’t get from the pulpit).