Sunday School Blog

Teachers Need a Class Director

One of the most important roles in a Sunday School class is the role of Class Director (aka Class Coordinator).  In many classes the teacher also fulfills the role of Class Director, but, ideally, these roles should be fulfilled by different people.

Do I really need a Class Director?
I taught for three years without a Class Director.  It came as quite a shock to me that there was a lot more to running a class than preparing a lesson!  Besides the hours of lesson preparation, I also needed to build relationships with class members, keep track of things like attendance and headcount, plan socials, find and train people for certain roles, attend meetings, and then do whatever else the church was asking all teachers to do. 

All this while working full-time at a demanding job and trying to maintaining relationships with friends and family.

I was under a lot of pressure.

I loved teaching, but the added pressure of managing the class, and not doing it as well as I wanted due to time constraints, resulted in some negative feelings and experiences, as well as some depression.  As a matter of fact, I determined that I would not teach a class again without a good Class Director already in place.

What are the responsibilities of a Class Director?
The Class Director is responsible for the "business" side of running a class.  Some responsibilities include:

• Finding people to fill service positions within the class
• Keeping up with paperwork required by the church
• Managing literature and correspondence

Basically, responsibilities include everything other than lesson preparation.

Who is qualified to fulfill the role of Class Director?
When considering someone for the role of Class Director, ask yourself these questions:

• Is he/she a member of the church?  (This may be a requirement of your church.)
• Is he/she a believer? (Being a member of a church does not necessary equate to being a follower of Christ.)
• Does he/she attend church and class regularly?
• Does he/she get along with others?
• Does he/she have a gift for management or organization?
• Can I work with him/her?  (If you often find yourself at odds with the Class Director, the entire class will suffer.)
• Has he/she proved faithful in ministry roles with less responsibility? (The Class Director should have a heart for service and be willing to do the "grunt" work, as well.)

How do I find a Class Director?
There may be an obvious choice, someone that pops to mind right away.  If not, here are some things that you can try:

• Consider those in your class that regularly offer to help with the little things.  Those that are willing to do the "grunt" work - without complaining - show a heart for service and may be ready for greater responsibility. 
• Consider those in your class that manage or organize others in their careers. These people have probably had some professional training in management of others or project management.  Managing and organizing in a volunteer organization such as a church is different than doing it professionally since people aren't paid to do what they say, so just because someone does it professionally doesn't mean they'll be successful as a Class Coordinator.  But they are certainly worth consideration.
• Ask other teachers and/or the leaders in your church if they know of anyone that would be a good Class Director. A good candidate may be in another class that doesn't need their services at the time, and would welcome the opportunity to serve elsewhere.  Be warned - some teachers can get territorial about their class members.  Phrase your request in such a way that they understand that you need their help and appreciate all that they've done to grow their class members.

What NOT to do - it's not a good idea to make a general appeal to the class, either verbally or by email.  Take it from someone who knows!  A general request such as this is impersonal and doesn't communicate the important of the role.  It may also result in someone stepping forward that is not qualified - AWKWARD!  It's best to approach an individual privately and personally.

Above all else, pray that God will provide and send the perfect person for the job!

Now it's your turn - what do you look for in a Class Director?

Class Sign-in Sheet

One of the most important tasks that we need to do every Sunday morning is take roll.  Last week we looked at a master class roll, so today we'll look at how to get that information each Sunday morning.

Some good reasons for having people sign in each Sunday are:

• To give that information to the church.  My church has a place in the bulletin where they give the number of people that were in Sunday School the previous Sunday.  It's not all about numbers, but it is one factor in determining effectiveness.  For example, if people keep visiting but not returning, maybe we need teacher development. 
• For the teacher or class director to see if a regular attender hasn't been to class in a while. There may be something going on in their life that we need to be aware of.  I learned this lesson the hard way.  I once had a regular attender that started coming sporadically, then disappeared for a few weeks.  Since his attendance had not been regular as of late, I didn't think anything of it.  But it turns out that he was in a car accident and was in the hospital.  He was quite hurt that I hadn't contacted him and I lost a regular attender.  This was one of my biggest regrets as a Sunday School teacher.  So it's good to be aware of attendance patterns.
• To update contact information. Maybe someone moved and has a new phone number.  Or maybe they decide to change email addresses.  It's best to give them a chance to give us their new contact information each Sunday morning so that we have it when we need it.

There are a couple different methods of sign-in:

• Pass around the class roll or sign-in sheet.  In my class I usually had someone responsible for making sure that everyone got the sign-in sheet.  We usually passed it around on a clipboard with a pen during announcements and it made its way around by the time we got to the lesson.  My class was small enough that the person responsible for the sign-in sheet could mark late-comers as present (if a regular attender).  My husband and I currently attend a very large class (a couple hundred people) which passes around binders with the class roll.
• Keep the class roll or sign-in sheet at a central location. I used to attend a very large class that kept their sign-in sheets on a table.  Attenders had to know to go to the table and sign-in. 

Important pieces of information that you'll want to have on the sign-in sheet (if you do not use a roll provided by your church):

• Date
• Full Name of attendees
• Contact information for each attendee (so that they can update if anything has changed)
• Blank for headcount (in case someone didn't sign in)

Below I've linked to a class roll with a tab for a sign-in sheet.  The file is in Microsoft Excel format.  Notice that there are blank lines at the top of the sign-in sheet for first-time visitors to fill in.  The goal is to have them already on the sign-in sheet by the second time that they visit.  This is easy to do if the master roll is kept up-to-date every week since we can just copy the pertinent information from the master roll to the sign-in sheet.  You can even create a macro to do that for you.

Download class_roll_with_signin.xls

Now it's your turn - tell us how you handle class sign-in each Sunday morning.

Class Roll

I've talked about calling visitors to your class to make them feel welcome and answer any questions.  In order to do that, we need to get their contact information by having them fill out some sort of visitor's slip.

Storage of this contact information is crucial.  Filing each visitor's slip can be helpful, but I learned a better way from another teacher - the all important class roll.  The church may have a class roll for your class, but depending on how they provide it to you (paper or electronic format), you may want to keep your own class roll, as well.

Here's why a class roll is important:

• It makes it easy to see who hasn't attended class in a while.  This is  best done if the class roll is in a spreadsheet.  A simple sort gives this information quickly and easily.  I found this to be an extremely useful tool for this reason.
• It's a good way to store contact information. Shooting an email to invite class members and visitors to socials is easy if all of the email addresses are in one place.  I sent out a weekly email to the class covering the previous lesson, a little something about the next lesson, and a list of future socials.  It also makes it easy to call people that haven't attended in a while.
• It helps track the number of people that attend each week. Being a Sunday School or Bible study teacher is about participating in building God's Kingdom, not our own kingdom.  So we shouldn't be a slave to the number of people in our class.  But it is helpful to see if attendance goes up or down drastically.  If attendance goes up drastically and stays up, maybe outreach is especially effective or the lessons touch on an important topic to the class members.  If attendance drops drastically, we can ask ourselves if there's something that we can be doing better.

Key pieces of information in a class roll are:

• Name
• Contact information - including phone numbers and email addresses.  It may also be helpful to keep track of home address.
• Attendance for each week
• Date last attended - for sorting the list.
• Miscellaneous information - names of children, special needs, etc.

Below is a link to an example class roll in Microsoft Excel formation.  The first tab keeps track of attendance for each member or visitor, and the second tab is a graph of overall class attendance.  We'll talk about keeping track of attendance each week in another post.

Download class_roll.xls

Now it's your turn - What are your ideas for keeping track of class attendance?

Calling People That Visit Your Class

Last week I posted about calling visitors to your church in order to invite them to your class.  Today we'll talk about calling people that visit your class for the first time.

It takes a lot of guts to visit a small group study for the first time.  Strangers, new surroundings, questionable coffee...all reasons to be on high alert.  If all goes well, the visitors should feel welcomed and feel comfortable enough to let their guard down a little.  The teacher undoubtedly prepared well and delivered a relevant message.  Maybe they even smiled and laughed a little, walking out the door with a good feeling about the class.

But that isn't the final impression that we leave with them.

Most visitors expect that their visit will be acknowledged by the teacher or class leadership.  We are safe to assume that people that visit a small group atmosphere want to be known, even if they hold back at first.  Ignoring their visit is tantamount to ignoring their existence.  And that's just not what visitors expect from dedicated followers of Christ.  Calling and saying, "Thank you for coming" is a way to express that we consider them valuable.

So now let's talk about the nitty-gritty.

1. Have all visitors fill out a visitor's slip when they visit your class.  You may get visitor slips from the church or have to make up your own.  The slips should ask the visitors to give, at the very least, the date of their visit, name(s), phone number, and email address.  Additional useful items are home address and the name of the person that referred them to the class.
2. Decide who's going to call each visitor.  I taught a single adult class, so I chose to ask one of the men to call male visitors while I called the female visitors.  You may rotate the task of calling visitors each week.  Or you may assign the visitor to a care group and let the care group leader make the call.
3. Call them the week of their visit if at all possible. If they give phone numbers for home, work, and cell, call their home phone first.  If you don't reach a live person, leave a message.  If you can't leave a message for some reason (wrong number, no answering machine), you could try the cell number.  But whatever you do, DO NOT CALL THEIR WORK NUMBER!  It may not be a direct line.  Or they may not be allowed personal calls.  Or maybe they're just busy, you know, working.  It's safe to say that they will consider a call to their place of work an intrusion, which will not leave them with a good impression of your class.
4. Identify yourself, say, "Thanks for visiting" and ask if you can answer any questions.  If comfortable doing so, you may want to ask them if there's anything that you can pray about.  You may be surprised to find that the person that was shy during class completely opens up one-on-one.  Or they may just say, "Thanks for calling, nice meeting you," and you never hear from them again.  Let the conversation flow or end, whichever is more natural.  But if the conversation does flow, don't let it flow too long!  You don't want them to avoid answering your future phone calls because they're afraid that you'll keep them on the phone too long. 
5. Send an email if you don't have a phone number or weren't able to leave a message. 

Go ahead and call.  It may be the deciding factor for the visitor between visiting another class or becoming a member of your class.

Calling People That Visit Your Church

There are two types of visitors that you'll want to call:

• Visitors to your church that did not visit a class but filled out a guest slip.
• Visitors to your class.

Today we'll talk about calling visitors to your church.  We'll discuss visitors to your class in a future post.

Visitors to Your Church

I've heard over and over again that someone that attends church services but never gets plugged into a small group will eventually leave the church.  So it's in the best interest of both your class and the visitor for you to call any visitor that is a prospective class member. 

If you don't already receive one, start requesting a list of visitors from your ministry head.  The list should have the information provided by the visitor on the guest slip.  Look for those visitors that provided their phone numbers.

Before calling, be sure to have the following information on hand:

• Your classroom number and simple directions.
• Child care information - where should the visitor take their small children while they are in class?

Once you're ready to make the phone call, you may want to take the following steps:

1. Pick a time to call the visitor.  It may be helpful to know a few things:
   
   • Many seniors are home during the day and would welcome a phone call.
   • Single professionals will be at work during the day, so the best time to reach them would be in the evening.
   • Mothers with small children may be home during the day, but not have much time to talk.
2. Create your "script" for how you'll begin the call.  Nothing too salesman-like, but nothing over-familiar either.  Here's a possible script:  "Hi, my name is ________ and I'm with the ___________ ministry at __________ Church.  I saw that you visited last Sunday, so I just wanted to call and invite you to one of our Sunday morning classes.  Would you be interested in getting more information about our classes?"
3. When you're ready to dial, smile!  The smile will come across in your voice.
4. After introducing yourself and stating the reason for your call, you may get one of the following reactions:
   • Irritation and a hangup.  (Yes, I have had a hangup.)
   • A polite "No thank you."
   • Expression of interest.
5. Don't get your feelings hurt if you get hung up on or no interest from the visitor.  You fulfilled your responsibility by reaching out to them.  But if the visitor does express interest, tell them about your class and ask them if they would like to visit the next Sunday.  If you feel comfortable in doing so, give them your contact information.  You may even want to arrange for someone to meet the visitor Sunday morning to walk them to the classroom. 
6. Offer to answer any questions they may have.  If you don't know the answer, tell them that you'll get the answer for them.  And then follow-up.
7. Keep the tone conversational and friendly.

If the visitor agrees to visit your class, great!  But be aware that they may still not come.  Again, don't get your feelings hurt.  That's just how it goes sometimes.  For those that do come - be ready to make a new friend!