By Dick Cagno

D. L. Moody, shortly after arriving in Chicago, approached the elders of the church he was attending and offered to teach a Sunday school class. He was told "we now have 12 teachers and only 16 pupils and you want to teach; you will have to provide your own students."

Moody came to church the following Sunday with 18 children that he recruited from the neighborhood surrounding the church. Thus the beginning of a new class and the building of an outstanding Sunday school.

The story of D. L. Moody emphasizes a point about Sunday school growth. If we want our school to grow, we will have to be the ones who make it grow.

Not just the pastor and leaders of a Sunday school have responsibility toward growth, but each teacher, worker, pupil should have a role in it.

Dr. Win Arn, in his book GROWTH: A New Vision For The Sunday School, reminds us that each Sunday school member has 8.4 contacts with unchurched friends, relatives, work and school associates, interest groups and neighbors that need to be invited to church and Sunday school. Surveys in his book show that 79% of the people who started to attend Sunday school on a regular basis had a friend or relative in that church who first invited them. This has great implications for your Sunday school growth.

(This article appeared in the "Summer, 1997" issue of "The Herald.")