The Fabulous Reinvention of Sunday School

The Fabulous Reinvention of Sunday School by Aaron Reynolds was recommended to me a couple of times so I purchased the book but never read it until this week. Reynolds has worked at Willow Creek so his vision of Sunday School is for large groups with an emphasis on performance of the story. He presents this as the only way to do Sunday School. This isn’t my situation so the beginning of the book was a little slow for me.

But when Reynolds focuses on how to tell a Bible story, the book came alive for me. Reynolds gives many bold, useful examples and ideas for how to tell a story. He has advice for adding sound and lighting and even for sprucing up the classroom environment. I found the ideas very helpful, practical and fun.

Even though I really liked parts of the books on storytelling I take issue with the some of what he writes. For example:

Make sure the application is in every lesson. If it’s not, give some real thought to adding it in. Because our job isn’t just to tell [the child] the story of Gideon. Our job is to make sure she knows that the story about Gideon …is a story about [that child].

Reynolds does not discuss on what a good application is or why an application is needed. I also think some of his applications miss the mark. In the above quote I would change that to say “that the story about Gideon.. is a story about God.”

While I have some real reservations about what he says about applications overall the book is fabulous, as advertized in the title. I wish I had read it long ago.