Click here to read part 3 of Dr. Rainer's Sunday School series.

Click here to read part 2 of Dr. Rainer's Sunday School series.

Editor's Note: So far we have examined the importance of preaching and prayer in the health of a church. This is the first in a series of four in-depth articles dealing with Sunday school, which ranked third for evangelistic effectiveness in churches.

Our journey so far has been a long one but I hope it has been beneficial. Let's remember where we've come from and where we are going on this last leg of the trip. In a study of almost 600 highly evangelistic churches we discovered that as varied as they were, there were three main factors common to all of them.

The first of these was the pulpit. Repeatedly the leaders of these evangelistic churches told us that preaching is one of the most effective means of reaching people for Christ.

The second factor was that of prayer. Though the forms of prayer ministries vary, the leaders of these evangelistic churches stress that their personal prayer lives and the prayer ministries of the church are inevitably tied to the winning of souls to Christ.

The third factor is the subject of the next four articles, Sunday school. If any program-based methodology proved to be a dynamic tool for these evangelistic churches, it was the Sunday school program.

What is a Sunday school?

Part of the problem for those who criticize Sunday school is perceptual. For some, Sunday school means sitting in an uncomfortable metal folding chair in a room with peeling paint, listening to a long and boring lecture on the Bible.

We asked the leaders of these evangelistic churches how they defined Sunday school. Their responses focused on four general characteristics:

Note that they did not define Sunday school as an organization meeting at a certain time, day, or place. Though most of the church leaders preferred on-campus classes for accountability, they did not limit the Sunday school to a room in the church building. To the contrary, many churches were quite innovative with their times and locations.

What about small groups?

Only 2 of the 576 churches indicated that they had replaced Sunday school with in-home or off-campus small groups. There was some confusion, however, concerning the definition of small groups.

Several mentioned that the location (home or off-campus) was the deciding factor, though they were willing to call their off-campus groups Sunday schools. Others spoke of the "intimacy factor" afforded by small groups, but then quickly responded that care groups in Sunday schools were just as effective.

A minister of education in Georgia said, "Sunday schools have had small groups meeting in the homes for decades. We have called them fellowship groups, care groups, and other names, but they essentially served the same purpose as small groups do today."

Many church leaders indicated that they had struggled with the debate of Sunday schools versus small groups. Should they lead their churches to begin small groups to replace Sunday school? Or should small groups supplement Sunday school?

The leaders did not think they could expect their people to be fully committed to two open-ended groups. Consequently, most of them chose to keep the Sunday school. Nearly one-fourth, however, indicated that short-term small groups had done well in their churches. The key, they told us, was for the small groups to have a clear termination date and a specific purpose.

What about the Southern Baptist bias?

Many Southern Baptists have perceived that Sunday school's effectiveness is waning. In fact, everyone on our research team was prepared for what we called "the Southern Baptist bias." But we were surprised at the intense loyalty these evangelistic churches have to Sunday school. The most evangelistic churches in the denomination responded with a resounding affirmation of Sunday school.

Since we studied Southern Baptist churches, we might expect a better response to Sunday school methodology than we would have received had we studied another group. Sixty-three percent ranked Sunday school as a major factor in their evangelistic effectiveness. Nearly 90 percent of the churches in the follow-up interviews identified Sunday school as their most effective assimilation tool.

The statistical results

Because our survey was only concerned with matters related to evangelism our initial survey asked only one question about Sunday school: "Rank your Sunday school in terms of its contribution to the evangelistic effectiveness of your church." (More information about other facets of Sunday school came through in our follow-up interviews. We will address those issues later.) Sunday school as a methodology for evangelistic effectiveness ranked only third, below preaching and prayer.

We were somewhat surprised to find that larger churches (more than 300 in attendance) use Sunday school as an evangelistic tool more than smaller churches. Even in the largest churches (1,000 and above), over 60 percent ranked Sunday school highly as an evangelistic methodology.