The Problem

Most people have never had a course in hermeneutics or in Bible study methods, but have adopted the habits and patterns of handling Scripture that have been modeled in the teaching and writings of those who have discipled them. Their modeling sources may include sermons, books, tapes, radio, and Bible study groups. However, those raised in the church learned a method of approaching Scripture long before they heard a sermon or mastered reading, through the modeling of parents, Sunday school teachers, and Sunday school curriculum. The curriculum may be the most significant of these factors because most teachers and many parents take their direction from the printed curricula that are in use in the church. As a result, there is no greater influence on how the Bible is used by today's Christian than Sunday school curriculum. This is why the need is so great for curricu1um to model proper methodology of handling Scripture.

The Sunday school curricula produced by evangelical publishing houses and widely used in evangelical churches claim to be Bible-based. What does this mean? From examining the materials, what it seems is meant is that the publishers of the curriculum believe in the authority of the Bible and use the Bible and Bible stories to achieve their educational objectives. These educational objectives would include teaching Bible content as well as teaching behavior and values that are biblical. However, being Bible-based does not necessarily mean that the agenda of Scripture has a central role in the curriculum development process. Frequently the objectives of the biblical author are neglected in the pursuit of the curriculum's own educational objectives. There is no commitment to teach always and only what the Bible is teaching in any given section. As a matter of fact, the relationship between the Bible's teaching in a particular passage and the educational objectives of the lesson or unit is often quite oblique and at times totally obscure.

The issue here is the issue of authority. The Bible, as God's Word, teaches with authority and demands the reader to submit to its authority. What we teach as human beings, be it valuable, sincere, challenging, and/or true, does not carry the same authority. Bible basis means nothing if it does not commit the curriculum to teaching what the Bible teaches in the story that is being used.

Our task is to enable God's revealed truth to flow out of the Scriptures into the lives of men and women [and children] today. . . . To expound Scripture is to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view. . . . The biblical text is neither a conventional introduction to a sermon [or lesson] on a largely different theme, nor a convenient peg on which to hang a ragbag of miscellaneous thoughts, but a master which dictates and controls what is said.1

If the Bible is used only as a jump-off point for one's own educational objectives, the Bible's authority is being bypassed, because if a passage is not being used to teach what the Bible is teaching, the teacher stands only in his/her own authority. Too much of today's curriculum teaches only with human authority rather than with the authority of God. This then is the authority crisis in curriculum.2