Bob Mayfield

New Blog for Sunday School Leaders

You may have noticed I haven't been blogging as much lately. Part of that is because I've had a busy spring and to be honest, God and I seem to have been wrestling a lot lately about stuff. I'm not limping around like Jacob, but I'm coming out on the losing end of the wrestling matches He and I have been having lately.

But also, for the past six weeks or so, I've been working with the state Sunday School directors of our 42 Southern Baptist state conventions to put together a new blog just for Sunday School leaders. So if you're a Sunday School teacher, pastor, Sunday School director, or a Minister of Education; I encourage you to go check out the new blog at http://sundayschoolleader.com. With so many different writers, it will have a variety of perspectives and writing styles.

Also, during the month of August, sundayschoolleader.com is posting a new article every day on the theme of "31 Days to a Great Expectation Sunday School", based on David Francis' new book Great Expectations Sunday School. It is already turning into a great collaboration and you can leave comments or ask questions and interact with Sunday School and Small Group leaders from all over the nation.

I'll still do some blogging here too, and try to stay up with both blogsites.

The Church Can Change a Country - Drastically

I was doing some surfing on the net today.. nothing serious, just some casual looking here and there when I ran across this story posted on Trevin Wax's blog. It is the story of how a church in Romania brought down communism and the incredible courage and conviction they had to disciple their people and reach out to those around them. As I read it, I remembered a man our church in Lubbock adopted, a Romanian architect who became the lay pastor of his church in Romania when the communists arrested his pastor. I remember several stories this lay pastor shared with us, like his wife "knitting" in the window of their apartment to keep a watchful eye for secret service agents while they had Bible study. We helped him get a seminary education in the states so that he would be "qualified" to teach in the communist controlled seminaries in his country (In an effort to weed out dissent, the government required anyone teaching in the seminary to have a degree. They forgot to mention what kind of seminary.) One of our members owned a semi-truck, and we bought furniture for this brave pastor and his family and shipped it to Southeastern Seminary for him to pursue his education.

Read this story on Trevin's blog. It is inspiring and will deepen your commitment to the cause of Christ.

Is It Time to Bury Arthur Flake?

At a recent meeting of State Sunday School directors in Nashville, I asked our group this question and threw it open for discussion: "Is it time to bury Arthur Flake?" For those of you who do not about Flake and what is now called "Flake's Formula", you might want to do some noodling on this guy. Arthur Flake is the patriarch of the modern Sunday School movement. Almost 100 years ago, Flake became the Sunday School director for the Baptist Sunday School Board, now known as LifeWay Christian Resources. Flake pioneered several different aspects of Sunday School. For example, Flake recognized that Sunday School teachers teach theology in their classes, so Flake began the Doctrine Clinic, an effort to provide doctrine resources to pastors to teach their Sunday School leadership. But Flake is best known for what has come to be known as Flake's Formula or Flake's Five.

1. Know your possibilities;
2. Enlist and equip your leaders;
3. Enlarge your Sunday School organization;
4. Provide space;
5. Go after the people

Although there is no book containing this formula in bullet-type format, you can find this formula scattered throughout the many books he wrote. In addition, Flake probably used this formula for his "talking points" as he drove all over the southern USA promoting evangelistic Sunday Schools.

Arthur Flake has impacted Southern Baptist life and culture for over 100 years. Perhaps only Herschel Hobbs and WA Criswell have had as much impact on Southern Baptist life as Mr. Flake. So the question remains, is it time to bury Arthur Flake and his formula?

I know that right now there are Sunday School leaders all over America who are downing entire bottles of blood pressure medication. Flake's Formula still works today for church leaders who understand and practice the five principles. But the question must be asked, is it time for Sunday School in general and Southern Baptists in particular to move on to a 21st century philosophy of Sunday School and thank Mr. Flake for his work?

First, a short critique of Flake's Formula. You may notice that God, prayer, Jesus, etc are not mentioned in the five principles. Spirituality is an assumption we put into the formula. This model would work in non-Christian church too. I have business friends who tell me that this is essentially the same formula they use to grow their business (by the way, Mr. Flake was a lay salesman). Also, let's remember that Flake's Formula was written to help build the church when society was more focused on institutions. Our culture today is less concerned (okay... maybe even skeptical) about institutional church growth and more concerned with personal growth.

I believe the time has come, not necessarily to bury Mr. Flake, but for leaders of small communities (Sunday School, small groups, etc) to begin a more earnest dialogue about how to transform lives in our culture. In other words, were Mr. Flake alive today, what principles would he be encouraging pastors and church leaders to use to reach our communities today as effectively as his generation reached his culture?

As a further note, I am writing a new book right to be released in March of 2010. The title: Flake's Hammer: From Methods to Missional Small Communities. I am going to address Mr. Flake and propose a different paradigm for reaching our culture today that I think would find Arthur Flake's approval.

Your comments are welcome!

Learning Communities

It has been my experience that many ministers would love the opportunity to freshen up their skills, read new books that relate to their ministry, and also be challenged to equip themselves for new opportunities to be missional leaders in their churches. In particular, I know that Education Ministers often need a network they can relate to, but who can also challenge each other in their spiritual growth.

We started a new experiment today for Oklahoma's ministers of education. Ten of us met at Meadowood Baptist Church in Midwest City to begin a two year process that we are calling "Minister of Education Learning Communities". The BGCO has one form of learning community called PLC's, short for Pastor Learning Communities. The ME's thought, "Why let the pastors have all the fun?" So I borrowed some ideas from the PLC process designed by Brett Selby, and then added the ME twist.

Here is the basic concept of our MELC groups (yes, that's plural. We started a group in the Oklahoma City metro today and next Thursday we begin another group in the Tulsa metro area).

• Education ministers often lead from isolation. There are not a lot of ME's around and it can be a lonely job. Many if not most ME's would love to have a group of people they can relax around.
• Iron sharpens iron. We need the ideas of other people to help us improve.
• Accountability. Virtually everyone needs some form of accountability around us to help us grow. ME's attending a learning community are asked to set goals to which they will be held accountable.
• Broaden and sharpen their skills. Like any other ministry position, ME's need opportunities to sharpen their skills and learn new ones.
• Add value to the local church. We want pastors and local churches to value the ministry and contribution of their minister of education.
• Build the Kingdom. Education ministers must be Kingdom expanders. This may seem to be rather obvious, but a look at most SBC churches reveals that the local church appears to be in a retraction rather than an expansion mode.

These ME's will meet monthly, develop a personal leadership map, take a leadership assessment and do a lot of reading. Each ME will also give a report to the group about the particular demographics of their church and their community. The MELC meets September-April of 2009-10, and the second semester the group meets September-April of 2010-11.

Here's our reading list below. If you would like more information about what we are doing for our MELC's, feel free to contact me at [email protected] and we will email you the syllabus.

2009-2010 MELC Reading List (in order of reading):
Sanders, Oswald J. Spiritual Leadership. Chicago: Moody Press, 1967, 1994.F
Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways. Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006.
Rainer, Thom. Essential Church. Nashville:  Broadman & Holman, 2008.
Taylor, Allan. Sunday School in HD. Nashville:  Broadman & Holman, 2009.

Making Change

No, I'm not talking about breaking your $20 bill into fives and ones, but about making change in your ministry setting. In his book Tribes, Seth Godin talks about three ways of making change. At our recent State Sunday School Directors meeting (guys and gals that lead Sunday School and Small Groups in their Baptist state conventions), Daryl Eldridge pointed us to Seth's book and led us through some key points.

Creating Change
First, is the factory-centric model. This model means that we create change by making whatever it is that we produce in a more efficient manner. So ultimately, creating change is being more efficient. So whatever we do requires cheaper labor and faster processes.

Second is the mass-marketing idea. Throw as much stuff at your consumers (churches, pastors, teachers, whoever) and hope that some of it lands in your consumers lap and gets noticed. Have you ever noticed that stack of mail on your desk, or those pesky unwanted emails you receive in your inbox? Yeah, mass marketing. Unfortunately, mass marketing creates lots advertising, but average ideas.

Third, and the thrust of Godin's book, is the concept of "tribes". Tribes connect people with similar needs, wants, and desires and builds a community. Mac users are a tribe. Harley riders are a tribe. Church planters are a tribe. Godin says that to form a tribe, find something that needs changing and create a movement by connecting people who agree.

Tribes lend themselves to movements. Tribes also connect with every individual's need to belong. Tribes have their own handshakes, they contact each other, they share a common passion. They contact other people in their tribe to let them know they miss them. And they are always welcoming others who show even the slightest interest in what they are about.

I'm having a thought here... what if our small groups and Sunday Schools thought like a tribe?