Nobody is born knowing how to teach children
Most Sunday School teachers in Pakistan are volunteers. They are mothers, students, factory workers and shopkeepers who love the LORD and love children, and who agreed to take a class because somebody had to. Very few have ever been trained, and almost none have been given a curriculum. They arrive on Saturday afternoon with a Bible and their own memory of the stories, and they do their best.
That is a great deal of faith and very little support. Teacher training exists to close that gap.
What a trained teacher can do
Training is practical rather than academic. By God’s grace, a teacher who has been through it can:
- Prepare a lesson in twenty minutes instead of an evening, using a written outline
- Teach the same passage four different ways, because a four-year-old and a fourteen-year-old need different things
- Hold the attention of thirty children in one room with no equipment
- Teach a memory verse so that children still know it a year later
- Answer the hard questions children actually ask, instead of avoiding them
- Recognise a child who is struggling at home, and know what to do next
How the training works
Training runs in three stages, and every stage is free.
1. The written curriculum
Every lesson on this site is a training document in itself. Each one sets out the memory verse, the passage, a teaching outline broken into short sections, an activity, a craft and a closing prayer. A teacher who works through a lesson before Saturday has effectively been coached through it. This is the reason the curriculum is published as web pages rather than locked inside a file: a teacher with a phone and a little data can read it anywhere.
2. Training days in the churches
The team in Pakistan runs training days in local congregations, where teachers are taken through the material, watch it taught, and then teach a section themselves in front of the group. Teaching in front of your peers is uncomfortable and it is the part that changes people.
3. Ongoing help
Teachers are not left alone afterwards. Questions, difficulties and requests for more material come back to the team, and the answers shape the next round of lessons that appear on this site.
Bring the training to your church
If you lead a congregation anywhere in Pakistan and your Sunday School teachers have never been trained, the team would be glad to hear from you. Write through the contact page and say where you are, roughly how many teachers you have, and how many children they are teaching between them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the training cost anything?
No. The training is free, the curriculum is free, and it will stay free. Teachers who cannot afford to buy Sunday School material are exactly the teachers this work exists for.
Do teachers need to be able to read English?
It helps, because the lesson outlines are written in English, but it is not essential. Memory verses are given in Roman Urdu as well so a teacher can read them aloud to the children, and training days are conducted in Urdu.
What if our church has no room, no craft materials and no instruments?
Then you are like most Sunday Schools in Pakistan. Every lesson in this curriculum is written to be taught with paper, a Bible and a teacher’s voice. The crafts use materials that cost almost nothing, and where a lesson suggests singing, it can be sung unaccompanied.
How long does a training day take?
A single day, usually a Saturday, from the morning until the late afternoon. Churches that want to go further can arrange a second day for teachers who have already taught a term using the curriculum.
Can our teachers use these lessons in a Christian school rather than a Sunday School?
Yes. Several of the lessons are already used in daily Bible classes at Maranatha Christian High School, and any Christian school is welcome to use them.