TIME Magazine, December 16, 2002 (excerpt)

"One of the most popular Sunday school innovations is the Workshop Rotation Model, started in the early 1990s by Presbyterian churches in the Chicago area. Instead of teaching a new Bible story every week, this method investigates one lesson over a longer period and, adapting Harvard professor Howard Gardner's "theory of multiple intelligence," incorporates various learning methods through different media. The Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, AZ., used this approach to teach about Jonah last month. One group of students found the relevant Bible verses on the Internet. A second group, using "bang and clang instruments," dramatized the storm that nearly drowned the prophet. And the third made and ate submarine sandwiches in a joking response to the questions "What do you think Jonah ate inside the whale?"

Those who advocate the rotation say the system makes it easier for children to learn in whichever medium they understand best. It also helps when it comes to recruiting teachers, as the instructors don't have to learn a new lesson every week and can specialize in what they do best. At First Presbyterian Church of Arlington Heights, IL., adult "shepherds" recently guided teams of children to five stations that taught the lesson David and Goliath: Mary's and Martha's Bed and Breakfast had storytelling on a Persian-style rug; Creation Station was an activity corner with art projects; Acts of Faith Theater featured a play; Kingdom.com offered Internet surfing; and the screening room, Paradise Pictures, showed a religious-themed movie with popcorn. "When I was sitting in church before, I used to bring something to do, like draw," says Drew Schulz, 11. "Now I'm learning things like Noah lived to be very old, and people were mean to him."

The most ambitious of the new techniques aren't cheap. First Baptist Church in Springdale, AR., paid $279,000 to Bruce Barry's Wacky World Studios, a set-design company in Tampa, FL., that specializes in Sunday school makeovers, to turn a room that had sometimes been used for funerals into a zany Toon Town where buzzers go off and confetti rains down during celebrations like baptisms. Many ministers say such investments pay off; Sunday school attendance at First Baptist has doubled since Toon Town opened in 1999. Some 30 congregations have hire Wacky World to transform their prayer halls into playgrounds. They view these livelier schools as a vital recruitment tool, believing that kids will bring not only their friends to church buth their parents as well. "If a kid comes home and says, 'I met some kids, I had fun and loved it, and I want to back,' most of the time a parante will say, 'OK', and then return to that church," Bill Hybels, pastor of the 12,000 member Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL., told Children's Ministry magazine. "There are church-wide benefits on all sides of a thriving children's ministry.""