Aim

The aim of correspondence teaching is to assist parents in isolation to teach their children the ways of God in a Sunday School atmosphere.
For this purpose, correspondence teachers send lessons each month to children. A teacher/scholar relationship is fostered and each child is treated as an individual with separate needs and receives personal attention from their teacher. We are always pleased to receive a letter from parents who do not have the advantage of being near an established Ecclesia.

In Isolation

Families living in isolation can easily fall into the habit of fitting Sunday School into the spare time that might be left after attending to stock, doing school homework, and a multitude of tasks that make up a busy life in the country.

As a result, it can be difficult for scholars (or their parents) to send the lessons back to their teacher in a regular pattern. To enable an orderly development of a knowledge of the Truth and a constant communication to be maintained between scholar/parent and teacher we encourage parents to set aside regular weekly times for Sunday School. Parents who are in isolation are strongly advised to show their children by example that the Sunday School work is of very high importance as Psalm 127 reminds us that our “… children are an inheritance of Yahweh” and it is our responsibility to educate them and to put their priorities in the proper sequence.

Malachi spoke of this principle in the first chapter saying, “… if ye offer the lame and the sick, is it no evil? Offer it now to thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person?”
Let us then endeavour at all times to put the things of God first, both in our intentions and in practice, so that our children can see by our example, the reality of the Truth in our lives.
When the daily reading of the Word, prayers and Sunday School lessons have been taught in an orderly and systematic pattern, then many of the difficulties of living away from the company of our brethren and sisters have been made more bearable and children have grown to appreciate the value of the Word and been obedient to its commands.

Suggestions to Parent

The following guidelines may help parents run their own Sunday School in the home:

  1. Set aside a special time each week, eg. 4.00pm each Sunday afternoon, to conduct your own Sunday School
  2. Dress the children up in their good clothes (this helps the children to see that Sunday School is SPECIAL)
  3. Always open and close your Sunday School with prayer to ask for God’s blessing
  4. Do a reading from your Bibles (the reading for the appropriate lesson you are dealing with) and let the children take turns in reading the verses
  5. Do the lesson set down by your teacher allowing enough time for the children to do their activities in the lesson period
  6. Have a question period, and reward the children with prizes if they get the answers right
  7. Above all, make your Sunday School a happy time and do all as unto the Lord, and the children will look forward to your session each week
  8. Encourage the children to write to their teachers who will in turn respond and a wonderful bond between student and teacher will grow, helping eliminate the barriers of isolation.

Many parents in isolation conduct their Sunday School each week along these lines, and have found them to be very rewarding, both for themselves and their children. Correspondence teachers have noted throughout the years that children in isolation left to their own resources have experienced difficulties and eventually lost the desire to continue Correspondence Sunday School.

If you would like some further information about Correspondence Sunday School, please contact us at cs@cssa.asn.au