Book Review by Clair Woodbury
My first question was “Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?” It is so simple.
Perhaps that it the greatest gift of this model—its sheer simplicity, coupled with a capability of being adaptable to any size of congregation.
What are people who use it saying? The book quotes a pastor from Ohio: “The boys went dashing down the hallway one Sunday morning. As they passed me, I asked, ‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ Their reply: ‘We’re going to Computer Lab!’ Never in my thirty-five years as a pastor have I seen children as excited about Sunday school as they are about our [Workshop] Rotation program.’”
Having read the book, I got almost as excited. In our work as consultants to congregations, we long ago realized an excellent church school experience was a key element in meeting the spiritual needs of families.
The Rotation Model emerged as the result of a crisis at the Presbytery Church in Barrington, Illinois — not unlike the one that faces the vast majority of Church Schools today. Attendance had hit an all-time low. Teachers were becoming harder to recruit and burning out earlier. They experienced the denominational curriculum as expensive and requiring a lot of preparation time. The children’s area looked “like a dungeon.”
The Rotation Model deals with all these issues. Here is their brief description:
1. Your elementary-age classrooms are redesigned into creative, media-inspired, kid-pleasing workshops that teach Bible stories. These workshops can include: art, drama, audiovisuals, computers, Bible games, puppets, and music.
2. Classes or groups rotate to new workshops each week for four or five weeks, the “rotation” period. Workshop teachers do not rotate. They stay put in the workshop, repeating the lesson to a new group of children each week (with some age-appropriate modifications).
3. During that five-week period only one Bible story is taught. The entire rotation — every workshop, every week — is focused on learning that one Bible story.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Sounds like a good idea, but I’ve read a lot of good ideas that work in one congregation but defy transplanting. That’s where I got my second surprise. There seem to be dozens of congregations using this process with enthusiastic results. They have a Workshop Rotation Model website (www.Rotation.org). A great site — do have a look at it. There is an online newsletter, pictures of workshop rooms, a bulletin board, and an annual national conference. It is a US model, but this one should work well in Canada.
The book is well written, the information clearly presented and help is readily accessible. The authors, Melissa Armstrong-Hansche and Neil MacQueen, have put some real care into creating a “how-to-do-it” book that is easy to follow and well arranged.
In this model, each grade level class moves to a different room each week. The art room has stools and open shelves of art supplies. The drama workshop is in a room with a real stage, costumes for dress-up, and space to move around. In another workshop area puppets tell the story, with space for children to make their own and design their own plays. The audiovisual workshop takes place in a “theatre” equipped with real theatre chairs purchased at a fire sale, and includes popcorn. You can have a TV Newsroom workshop, a Bible games room, a music workshop, and the most popular of all, the Bible Computer Lab. Starting with two PCs, the lab now has five, all loaded with Christian software programs. (If you are wondering what software is available today, just go to www.sundaysoftware.org to have your mind blown away.)
Teachers stay with their room. That means they teach the same lesson for three to six weeks in a row. It reduces preparation time. More important, teachers get better every week as they perfect their presentation. In addition, they get to teach in areas they love. That takes the emphasis off getting through the lesson and puts it on developing teacher-child relationships.
Traditional curriculum covers a story a week. By spending four to six weeks looking at one story, children really get past the surface and develop a true understanding of the underlying message. “Children and teachers don’t get bored by the slower pace and the repetition of the story. On the contrary, they relax, interact, have fun, get more involved, and have more time to think and do and talk.”
Regular church attendance for many people today means one Sunday out of three. When several weeks are spent on one story, even those who miss several weeks receive the message. More important, kids know what is ahead next week and more often than not invite friends to join them. “Our Sunday school became the number-one reason people said they continued to visit and eventually join our congregation,” write the authors.
Today with the Internet, information is not the issue. What people are looking for more and more are relationships. In this, children are no exception.
In creating this model, the two authors Melissa Armstrong-Hansche and Neil MacQueen, recognized that “Sunday Schools tend to teach information rather than transformation.” After struggling with this, they realized “the transformation process on Sunday morning begins not in the head but in the heart, in the eyes, through the smells, sights, sound, and feelings people have.” They realized there are many ways in which children learn. Rotating through different workshops gives everyone an opportunity to learn in a way that best meets their needs.
Melissa Armstrong-Hansche & Neil MacQueen, Workshop Rotation: A New Model for Sunday School. Louisville: Geneva Press, 2000. $12.00 CDN.