Free Sunday School Lessons and Curriculum

Free Sunday School lessons and curriculum?

It's all over the web, and most of it is either garbage*, or less than good. I can say that because I regularly look at what other people are posting, and I have been a Sunday School teacher and Bible lesson writer for over two decades.

I started one of the FIRST online sources of free lessons Sunday School lessons back in 1997 over at www.rotation.org. Our goal was to collect creative lesson ideas for teaching Bible stories from friends, colleagues, and complete strangers --all of whom were using the Workshop Rotation Model to organize their Sunday School. We felt the publishers lessons "looked polished" but lacked creativity. So we tried to harness the power of the grassroots to give us choices and inspirations.

In those early years, honestly, many of our lessons were less than good too. But we were just interested in seeing people's creative IDEAS. Wrapping a lesson plan around it was up whoever took the idea.  Creative teachers are like that... they are looking for the creative inspiration, not the "blah blah blah" of a lesson. That's who we catered to, ...for free.

Over time, people started writing and posting "complete" Sunday School lesson plans at rotation.org. Many of them are still there, quite awesome, and free. But as the site grew (it now has over 8000 members), so did the amount of "less than stellar" ideas. Old "blah blah blah" started to creep in to the content. Even our volunteer "writing team" content started to suffer from quality control. That happens with an expanding community, but fortunately, the folks who run Rotation.org came up with a plan to correct it as they grew.

I had left active administration of the site in 2008 to concentrate on my Sunday School software ministry at www.sundaysoftware.com. Then in 2012, www.rotation.org hired me to take on a massive"Weed and Feed" of their free Sunday School lesson content. Why me? Because they needed someone who understood both the technical and lesson plan side of things.

We "retired" about half of the accumulated content, and fluffed and fixed a lot of the nice content. That said, the site is about having choices, and not simply finding a single lesson plan on a single Bible story that you can print and teach 15 minutes before you walk into class.Creative teachers want CHOICE and inspiration. They aren't afraid of prep.  And sometimes it's the slightly off idea that sparks a teacher to something better, so we didn't gatekeep completely.

Then in 2015, the folks who run rotation.org hired me for another big project. I was asked to come in and revise their writing team's lesson sets, -over 250 of them. These sets were free to supporting members. At $30 a year, though, having access to all that content is a bargain compared to curriculum prices, and those helped those who need something a little more "put-together."

The New Rotation.org Writing Team's lesson sets ARE complete lessons, and super-creative. They are designed for the creative person who is looking for inspiration, and the creative leader who needs to hand a complete lesson plan to someone else to teach with. They are meant to be adapted, because that's what the best teachers will do.

Want to learn more?

• See the free Sunday School lesson plans at www.rotation.org
• See the Writing Team's lesson sets I've been working on
• Read my article about the Rotation Model
• Learn more about software for Sunday School

Neil MacQueen is a Presbyterian minister, Christian education resource provider, and lesson writer.

________________________

*garbage

1. Coloring is not learning. 
2. Popsicle-stick Jesus crafts are not memorable ways to make content stick, they are time fillers. 
3. A lot of the so-called "free" lesson sites are CLICK BAIT sites. They post mediocre crap, or hire lesson writers to come up with uninspired content, with the hopes that you'll see the ADS they are running all over their site.
4. A lot of the so-called "free" Bible lesson sites are posting lessons full of "what to say" with little hands-on learning (unless you count coloring as that). 
5. Many of these so-called "free" Sunday School lesson websites are only posting lessons for LITTLE children. Their lessons will bore the tears of your 4th and 5th graders. 
6. Many of these "free" Bible curriculum sites have questionable theology, and/or reduce Bible stories down to "do this, don't do that" morals. 
7. They often have little reflection
8. They usually offer ZERO in the way of multimedia activities. No video or drama suggestions. They are all about the crafts.
9. They are retreads of the kinds of in-creative, talk-talk, "Bible lessons lite" that BORED the last two generation of kids out of Sunday Schools.

If you disagree with my point of view, email me your link to good free material. neil@sundaysoftware.com