Sunday school gone postal

I’m the children’s worker at St Mark’s Anglican Church in Oakhurst, in Sydney’s western suburbs. I don’t see my role as a job; I see it as a wonderful God-given opportunity to support the other people in our children’s ministry team and to share the gospel with people in my parish. When I say ‘people in my parish’, I don’t just mean those who come along to my church; I mean all the people within the area where my church is located. I want people young and old to have the opportunity to come into a relationship with Christ, and my aim is to reach families via the various children’s ministries I’m engaged in. One of the ways St Mark’s does this is through holiday clubs. During the school holidays, lots of children who aren’t normally connected to a church come along and participate. When the holiday club wraps up at the end of Term 1 and Term 2 begins, I go through the attendance lists and registration forms, and meet with my leaders. I flick past the children I know who already attend St Mark’s. I also flick past the children who belong to another Bible-based church in the area because I know they’re already being taught God’s word. Then I move down to children I don’t know that well—children who normally don’t attend our programmes. I ask my leaders if any of these children have joined their group. If they have, I leave it at that because it means that we now have a connection with the family. If not, I phone the parents and ask them if their child enjoyed the holiday club. I inform them about our postal Sunday School, and ask if they are interested in their child receiving activity sheets in the mail. 90 per cent of the parents I speak to say yes. I then pass on the child’s details to my colleague who looks after the postal Sunday school. Postal Sunday school is not a new idea; the Salvation Army run them, and there are postal Bible schools all over the world for children and adults. We at St Mark’s have just adapted the concept for our context. The coordinator sends out lessons to the children. The lessons differ according to their year group: kindergarten, Years 1-2, Years 3-4 and Years 5-6. Children receiving material for Years 5-6 have a harder activity sheet, while children in kindergarten might just do colouring in. The first lesson is usually sent out with the Bible text, so if we’re working through the book of Mark, we’ll post them a children’s Gospel you can buy for about $1.50 or so. After that, the children receive lessons once a fortnight for the next eight months. By doing this, we maintain a connection with the family, and can even include advertising material for church events with each lesson. Last year around 37 children from over 22 families were involved in the programme. Later in the year, I phone the parents and arrange to visit for 5-10 minutes to see the children’s work. Many of the parents are very obliging, and organize a time. The postal Sunday school coordinator and I go to pay the family a visit. The children even meet us at the front door with their books. The parents welcome us, and many invite us in for coffee, though we thank them for the kind invitation and ask if we can phone them to arrange another time for that. Sometimes we’ve been able to stay a bit longer and spend time getting to know these people we would not normally see. At the end of the year, we hold a Christmas family fun afternoon and invite all the families along. A couple of years ago, I left it too late to invite them. In addition, it was held too close to Christmas, which was a bad strategic move as not many families came along. So I try to have it in November when there aren’t many other activities on. Postal Sunday school wraps up at the end of December, and that’s it until we have our next holiday club at the end of first term of the new year. Then we start fresh with a new list of children. However, many children continue from year to year. We try to link them into church activities then. Some start coming along to our Sunday school, boys’ group or girls’ group. Some families are cautious about their involvement. In some families, the children are keen, but the parents are not. The postal Sunday school coordinator and I continue to work at phoning the parents occasionally and visiting them. On a number of occasions, we’ve been able to spend an hour over afternoon tea with them, building relationships with them. This helps so that, when we phone them later, they know we don’t have any hidden agendas. We hope that such relationships will lead to other opportunities in the future, and that, in time, these families will come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and enjoy a fruitful relationship with him.