Welcome to She Teaches Sunday. My name is Christina. The goal of this podcast is just some real talk about teaching kids in a Sunday school setting. We'll talk about what works, what flops, and basically surviving the chaos. I have about 15 years of experience teaching Sunday school, but I'm still learning every single time I get in the classroom. This isn't going to be expert advice. These are just lessons taught through experience that I'd love to share with you. Welcome to She Teaches Sunday. I want to talk today about prayer in the Sunday school class. Now, little disclaimer. I know a lot of you are already doing this, but not everybody does. And those who don't do it aren't skipping it because they think it's a waste of time, pointless, or anything like that. So for those of you who are already praying in their Sunday school class, awesome. For those who aren't, I do understand. There are a lot of reasons to avoid prayer in class. Now, we all know. That it's not something that we should avoid. But we have some arguably legitimate reasons for skipping prayer time in the classroom. To be honest, one of them would be it gets out of hand fast. The kids aren't taking it seriously and they decide prayer request is the time where they start telling you about all the negative things that happen in their week. Not because they want you to pray about it, but because they want to talk about it. Another thing that I've had is the copy-paste prayers. One kid's like, well, I'd like to pray about my dog. And then all of a sudden every other kid wants to pray about a dog too. Whether or not they actually have one, they'll find somebody who has a dog and then want you to pray about that dog. They don't really think about what they actually want prayed. They just want to copy the person who went ahead of them. If you have older kids, you might deal with unspoken prayer requests. Which are fine. But you have one kid that goes, well, unspoken. And then the next kid... Unspoken. Unspoken. Now you're normally going to get that with the older age groups and that might be frustrating as well because you want to actually pray for their needs and they're just saying unspoken. And disclaimer, it's not a bad thing, but I do understand as a teacher that we want to kind of really show them what prayer is about and not have to pray for these vague, we'll take care of so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so because of... they have some sort of problem they need help. Other problems would be the class clown decides it's time to tell a joke during this time. Another reason is time restraints. We may only have 25 minutes, 45 minutes to teach a Sunday school class and while, yes, prayer doesn't take that long, it takes so long to get through a Sunday school class with so many things to do that it definitely starts to feel like stuff needs to be cut and prayer is an easy thing to cut. But the biggest reason that a lot us don't pray in the Sunday school class is because we're scared to. We're scared to pray in front of others even if it's just children. And I get that. If you're the same way, it does not mean that you're a bad teacher. I definitely believe that we should have prayer in the Sunday school room, but if you haven't been doing it up until now, don't blame yourself. Moving forward, definitely do it, but it's okay. I get it. I am the exact same person. I am the one who has been scared of teaching in the Sunday school class for years. Now, I do want to go over a little bit of why prayer matters in the Sunday school classroom. So I think all of us are probably pretty much on the same page about how important prayer is, how much it could actually be useful or needed in the Sunday school room. So I probably don't even need to list any of those things, but I think I'm going to anyway just because I want. It's good to have a reminder of why this thing called prayer is so important for us and so important for us to do in front of kids. One of the major ones is we might be the only ones showing them this. Not every kid goes to church on a regular basis or has parents that go to church on a regular basis. And even some of the parents who go to church regularly may not be praying at home or maybe they have very private prayer times where the kids just aren't hearing prayers. Kids need to be hearing prayers. They need to be seeing other people praying. We are an example to them and it is very, very important. So it's something they need to be seeing. And prayer is actually the most transferable part of what we teach. So we're teaching them all kinds of different lessons and characteristics that they need to be learning, things about God, random facts about Bible stories. We're teaching them a lot in our Sunday school class. But prayer is the easiest thing for them to take away from that lesson. It's the easiest thing for them to remember how to use. We can teach them a lesson about forgiveness and they may get it but have a little bit of trouble applying it once they get out of the classroom because you know somebody makes them angry. It's very hard to remember oh maybe I should forgive them in that moment. And it's something we're teaching them but I get that it's something that's hard to apply. Prayer on the other hand is something that's very very easy easy to apply they may remember oh I have a need let me ask God to help with it it's something that's very very easy to do I think maybe it's because we're selfish by nature but it's easy to remember oh I want this or I need this let me talk to somebody who can help me with that and while I know it does seem like a selfish way of looking at it if we can get these kids praying it's really going to make a world of difference. And it's something that we can easily, easily teach them to do. We just have to be modeling it for them. It's an example for them. We are the example. And we're not showing them just how to ask God for stuff, although it may seem like it starts that way. We're actually starting to show them how to talk to God and how to listen to God. Now they learn to pray by watching us pray. So remember that. They're learning by example and we're actually one of their examples. Hopefully we're not their only example, but keep in mind that it is a possibility that we might be that only example. And as we keep doing it from week to week, it actually does become less scary and more natural. So I did go over before, there's a lot of challenges with this. You wouldn't think so, but there definitely is. So some of the ones I mentioned would be like time crunch. I just don't have time to pray in the classroom. I only have, say, 25 minutes and I've got to go through the lesson. I've got to go through the craft. I've got to go through maybe a game. I've got to do something to kind of make it stick to them. I need to do some sort of welcome. I need to delay the first 10 minutes of class because all of my students come in late and I don't want to start without all the kids there. There's a lot... of reasons and time crunch is probably one of the biggest. Instead of eliminating prayer in general, just kind of limit the prayer request time. And don't be afraid to say, we're going to do quick one sentence requests and kind of pare it down and keep them from going on and on and on and on and on. If you're in a class and there are so many prayer requests that you can't remember them all when you go to pray, and this is if you have the time to do it, I write them down. I can't remember. The kids have so many prayer requests that if you have time to do them, definitely if you can't remember, write them down. It doesn't take away from your credibility of prayer to have to be reading the prayer requests from a piece of paper. It really doesn't. If you're in a time crunch and you're kind of noticing after a couple of requests that there are similar requests, maybe you could group some of those requests. You could say, well, it sounds like a lot of us are praying for family. Let's just go ahead and pray for everybody's family. Now, I will say that... That's only if you're in a time crunch. If you actually have time to listen to each individual prayer request even if you tell them to keep it to one it is a lot more meaningful to them to hear you pray for their specific need. So whenever possible I would definitely recommend trying to do them individually. But then again I get it. If there's a time crunch just go ahead and group them. Now for those kids who are giving silly or repetitive requests, that's a little bit more challenging and it doesn't help if the silly request comes in early. That means everybody else is copying them and so the first one says, oh, I want to pray for my little sister's toy. Then all of the sudden the next person wants to play for their little brother's toy and so on and so forth. So if you have a lot of that, I would start with teaching what a prayer request is and let them know, hey, we're going to do prayer requests now. And prayer requests is for something that we believe God will help with. This isn't something that's going to be silly. This is something real, something we need God to help us with. And if they still do something kind of on the silly side, maybe they're not trying to be silly, and this is especially with the younger kids. They're like, oh, I need you to pray for my little pet turtle's toe. He stubbed his toe. As long as it isn't an inappropriate kind of prayer request, just pray for it. Maybe the turtle really did hurt his toe. And even if the turtle didn't hurt his toe, turtle doesn't care, turtle doesn't know, turtle doesn't exist, it's going to mean a lot to that kid that you paid attention to their prayer request, took it seriously, and prayed for their turtle's toe. Now for kids who won't participate at all or those who share off-topic stuff, If that's the kind of group you have in general maybe start off by using prompts to kind of keep them on track like is anyone's family going through a hard time or who knows anyone who's been sick and kind of keep them on that same track. Maybe in some cases, instead of asking for prayer requests, we could say something like, we're each going to think of one thing that we're thankful for, and let's pray a prayer of thanks today instead of making requests. And that's something I might do anyway. Not every single week, definitely pray for requests, but every now and then. just give a prayer of thankfulness. It's something that biblically we need to be doing anyway, so let's teach them to be thankful. And on the plus side, it does kind of keep them on track and not getting all distracted and being silly. Now another big problem that we have sometimes, and I hadn't mentioned this yet, is depending on the group of kids, sometimes when you go to pray, kids are bored with prayer. They're bored of prayer time. They don't want to do it. Sometimes prayer feels like the time when the class just collectively just zones out. Now in my case, first and second graders, they're kind of always distracted anyway, not zoned out, but not paying attention. So for me, prayer time's about the same as any other time. They don't really want to pay attention. Now kids are generally... not quiet. They're noisy all of the time but I find that when you ask them to pray out loud, not singling them out but kind of praying out loud as a group, suddenly they are all about the meekness. They're just as quiet as can be. They don't want to talk. All of a sudden they get that same self-consciousness that some of us adults have to deal with with praying. They don't want to do it. They seem to be scared to. So if they're scared I'm not going to make them do it. But I'd rather them not all just bow their heads and try to be quiet while they listen to me pray. Prayer isn't about one person talking to God and everybody else listening to that one person talk to God. Prayer is about talking to God. Not just me. For all the kids too. Now I can tell them this and I'm definitely going to encourage them to pray to God themselves while I'm praying and they're probably just going to listen to me anyway. But I do want to encourage them that it's their time to talk to God as well. They don't have to just listen to me. We can all be praying out loud at the same time. It is all good. And maybe it would even help having an example of someone doing just that. Get your co-teacher if you have one involved. Get them to pray out loud while you're praying out loud too. Get some noise up before the throne of God. Show them that it is not something to be ashamed of and it is not something to be scared of. We're kind of teaching ourselves this right along with teaching them. We're also teaching them that this isn't a show. It's not just one person giving their performance of a prayer. Oh, Lord, thou art the greatest God in all the earth, and we beseech thee to answer our prayers. It's not that. It is all of us sincerely talking to the one who can actually hear us and make a difference in our lives. And we want to show them how to pray. Prayer isn't boring. But we have to show them that. If we get them all to quietly bow their heads, fold their hands, and listen to us drone on in Old English, yeah, it's going to be boring to them. And that's not what we want to show them. A kind of cool idea though to making it a little more exciting when going into prayer is to kind of change up how you do it every week, every quarter, something to that effect. An example is when I was teaching a kindergarten class years ago, I think it was actually the curriculum book recommended getting an umbrella one lesson and sitting on the floor having the children gather around you and you explain that the umbrella is... I don't know I think it was something like a God's covering or something and it was explained in a way that was appropriate for that age group and we would pray under the umbrella all kind of huddled up and hugging and they loved it and it was supposed to have been just a one week thing and instead I did it for I think the entire quarter maybe longer because they loved that change they loved huddling under the umbrella it was something new and different and I recently just tried something different with my first and second graders as well we were teaching about Paul and his journeys and so we were having fun with a ship and so I had cleared most of the chairs and tables so the floor was kind of open and we were doing the adventure and we were pretending to be in the boat wave splashing all that fun stuff and at the very end after we had had a shipwreck swam to Malta I got them all to sit on the floor and in the floor surrounded by children is when we did the prayer request so that was different normally we'd be sitting at a table doing a prayer request after the lesson this was totally different and it was wonderful because it tied directly into the lesson of God having protected Paul from the shipwreck God answered prayers because Paul had obviously prayed for God to protect him so it was a wonderful Wonderful lead-in for the children. God protected Paul. God can protect us. God listened to Paul's prayer. God can listen to our prayer. It was a wonderful tie-in, and it was a little bit different, so it got their attention. They still didn't pray out loud. They normally don't for me, but they did seem engaged with the prayer. They were very willing to give their prayer requests. They did stay on task, and it really went well. But this wasn't a one-time event where the lesson just so happened to tie in perfectly with prayer request and praying time. If you really look at it, you might be surprised at how many lessons can tie into prayer. I would even say all of them can tie into prayer because when it comes right down to it, every Sunday school lesson is about God, right? So every Sunday school lesson can in some way be about talking to God or what happens if you don't talk to God. Every single lesson can tie into prayer and should to some extent tie into prayer. Yes we are still trying to teach them other things and we definitely need to drive those points home but every single time we can tie it into talking to the one we're talking about. Now in my opinion the biggest reason that people don't pray in the Sunday school room and this was the reason for me for years and years and years is because you are terrified of it. I was that teacher. Let's be honest. I am that teacher still. I am terrified that those children are judging me. That I'm going to mess it up in front of them and they're going to be like oh well you didn't pray right. And even worse I'm afraid that any adult teachers in front of me no matter how close friends we are I'm afraid that they will judge me. And I know they're not but somehow it doesn't actually matter. In the moment I'm like oh they're going to think that I'm the worst prayer ever. That I'm not close to God. That I'm just fumbling in front of them because I've never prayed before in my entire life. It's obviously not true but it doesn't matter. In the moment that is exactly what's going on through my mind. I'm also afraid that maybe I've been praying wrong all along and I'm not actually doing it appropriately and I'm going to be teaching the kids wrong or they're going to go home to their parents and say, oh, Sister Christina taught me to pray this way. And the parent's like, what? Are you kidding me? She's not supposed to say, oh, Lord. She's supposed to say, oh, Father, she's wrong. Why is this person teaching my kids? As you can tell, my brain really takes things way too far. This is obviously something that would absolutely never happen, but it doesn't matter. It stopped me from praying in front of the kids for years. And guess what? Some of these fears actually come to pass. I just prayed for some of my kids in Sunday school and I thought, you know what, not all of them had a request, but I'm going to call every single one of them by name and pray that God takes care of them, takes care of their week, whatever. And so I did. I prayed for every single one of them by name. Now, I've mentioned earlier that I have to write down prayer requests before I teach them, otherwise I'm going to forget. So me trying to list my 10 students by name without forgetting any one of them is going to be really difficult for me, especially since I actually do have a little bit of stage fright when I'm praying so that was a bit of a challenge for me so I had to visually look at every single one of them to remember their names and for some reason when I got about halfway through the students I suddenly wasn't sure if I had mentioned a student that I had already visually passed and so I just said her name and kept on going prayed all the way through we finished up and one of the kids goes hey you mentioned me twice and the other kids of course backed that up yeah you mentioned her twice so Yeah, sometimes the kids are going to call you on it. But looking back on it, was that really so bad? No, it wasn't. And I think I made a decent recovery. I think I said something to the effect of, oh, well, you know, God loves you so much that you're worth mentioning twice. And you know what? You're worth mentioning twice too. And you're worth mentioning twice too. So I made sure to point to every kid and let them know that they would be worth mentioning twice too. It was a little embarrassing. I did mess up. I did get caught on it. I did get called on it. But you know what? That really wasn't judgment. They weren't angry. They weren't upset. They just noticed and wanted to point out that they had noticed. That's all it was. And you know what? That's actually great because they were paying attention. They were listening. But it still doesn't make the fears go away. So if you're just starting out praying in your Sunday school room, please just do it. And don't be afraid to script a prayer. It's not wrong. It's not unbiblical. Jesus even gave us an outline for a prayer. when he gave us what we call the Lord's Prayer. That was just kind of basically an outline. And when I had to start and when I first started praying in front of the kids I did end up writing myself outlines. Now obviously I don't know what the prayer requests are going to be before I go in but you do have a basic idea like a kid is going to pray for ask you to pray for healing or they're going to ask for a family member just to be taken care of in general. And maybe they're going to ask you to pray for a pet. So I would just take the most basic prayer requests and actually kind of script them out. And I would actually write the entire thing not even outline an outline for me I would write it word for word with just gaps missing for names of the kids the pets whatever because I was so nervous that I needed to do that and don't be afraid to do that it's just a tool to help you move forward with this and as you keep going it is going to get a bit more natural now if you're like me you're still going to need to write down the prayer requests because you can't remember them at all but it is getting more natural and I will say I am not fully there I am not the a person who can get up in front of adults still and pray my heart out and not feel like the stupidest person in the world. I'm fine at home. I don't have a problem praying at home. Not self-conscious there. I do just fine. But you know what? I'm a work in progress. So let me give you a little bit of encouragement. You do not have to be a prayer warrior. Just be willing. And the kids aren't judging your words, even though sometimes it seems like it. They're just watching your example and it means a lot to them. And it's okay to be nervous. It's okay to keep it short. Don't worry about using big fancy words. It's been said many times before, but we rarely take it seriously that prayer is just a conversation, just talking to God. And we don't always really do that when we're praying in front of kids. We do throw in a lot of We may throw in a lot of church jargon or fancy words just to make us feel like it's an official prayer, but don't worry about that. Make it understandable for the kids. Use simple words. It's fine. It doesn't have to be hard. In fact, it's better if it's easy. We're not trying to impress them. We're trying to teach them. And when it comes down to it, it's the faithfulness of it that counts. Pray every week with them. It doesn't have to be long. Just keep it short. But be consistent. Be faithful. So let me give you a little challenge. What I just said, be consistent, be faithful, that's your challenge. Just try to keep consistent prayer time for one month. Just four Sundays. Give yourself a time limit. 60 seconds of prayer. Actually, you know what? I think mine are a lot less. 30 seconds of prayer. It may take you one to two minutes, depending on the size of your class, to gather up those really quick prayer requests, but 30 seconds of prayer? You can absolutely do that four times in the next month. And when you're done, just kind of keep a note of how it went. You'll be really surprised at how well it actually goes. And listen, prayer doesn't derail your lesson. Prayer is the lesson. This is what we're teaching kids. We are teaching kids to have a relationship with God and we're teaching them his word. We're teaching them how to act like Jesus. We're teaching them how to live their lives. For all the Christianity we're teaching them, we've taught them nothing if we haven't taught them how to communicate with the person that we're serving. Prayer is the lesson. So thank you for hanging out today. And if you enjoyed this, make sure to subscribe and follow. But before you go, here's your Sunday school tip of the week. This is something I've heard of other teachers doing. So disclaimer, I haven't done it yet, but it is definitely something I'm going to try. Keep track of answered prayers. Ask your kids every week if God answered any of their prayers. When they have an answer for you, write it down. Write it down on a board. Maybe put it on a little note and put it in a jar that you fill up with these testimonies. Whatever you want to do. But at the end of a quarter, a year, whatever time frame you designate, pull it out. Read those answered prayers. We know that our God is a prayer answering God. But sometimes it really helps for us to be able to see that. To be able to look at them and say, oh wow, he did do these things and I remember. It really helps our faith to grow like the little mustard seed. And not only does it helps us, it helps our children to grow. For them to go back and remember, oh yeah, God really did answer this prayer and he answered that prayer and he answered it for me and he answered it for my friends. It is a wonderful faith builder and I can't wait to do this in my class. So that's it for now. See you in two weeks.