How to Teach a 25-Minute Sunday School Lesson
Successful short Sunday classes need to be focused, engaging, and spirit-led.
I went through all the stages of church-policy-change grief and acceptance in about 10 minutes after I heard we were moving to 25 minute second-hour classes. I LOVE SUNDAY SCHOOL. I’m a corporate trainer and presentation skills coach by day who has been clawing his way through a faith journey (Deconstruction? Crisis? Obsessive deep-dive?) by night. I’m also an early morning seminary teacher. And there is nothing more thrilling to me than being called on a Sunday Morning by a desperate Sunday School president in need of a sub. And I love attending Sunday School.
If you teach Sunday school and you take nothing else from this post, let it be this: You are important. No matter how ill-prepared you feel or how underwhelming you deem your own performance, those who are prepared will be taught what they need to learn. Your calling is simply too important for God to let it be otherwise. Just try and you will succeed.
My biggest complaint about Sunday School now is that ~50 minutes is way too short! I get that gospel study is supposed to be “home-centered and church supported,” meaning the majority of gospel learning should take place outside of the classroom, but, in my opinion, 50 minutes simply isn’t enough support.
And now we will have even less time.
Luckily, there are some strategies and practices I think can help. These are drawn from my experience attending and leading successful classes around the world, and if you implement even one of them in your next class (no matter the length, actually) your attendees will be empowered to engage in the kind of home-centered gospel learning that changes lives.
Teach exactly ONE THING
In the Gospel of John, Jesus meets a woman of Samaria at a well. Throughout the encounter it's apparent that there is much the savior could teach this woman. But his interaction with the woman is centered on a single message: he has living water.
His background knowledge only serves to inform and aid in proclaiming this single message. This was his ONE THING.
When a teacher is similarly focused, she has a much better chance of accomplishing her learning objectives.
Ask yourself this question: what ONE THING do I want my learners to do after class as a result of my teaching?
Write down your answer. Then try to make it more specific and more actionable.
Your ONE THING may be a question to ponder, context to consider throughout the week, a sin to repent of, a prayer for revelation, or a doctrine to understand more deeply. Whatever it is, it will be a step closer to the redeeming love of Jesus Christ.
Once you have your ONE THING, curate everything you teach toward that specific aim. Don’t wait until the end of class to reveal it. Come right out with it, and then use the scriptures, inspired questions, and other teaching techniques to motivate your class to learn that one message as deeply as possible.
Start Strong
Fundamentally, learners need 2 things in order to learn:
They must listen
They must apply what they hear
One of the benefits to a shorter Sunday school class is that–in a world where attention is increasingly fragmented–you don’t have to motivate learners to listen for very long! But you do have to get them to listen quickly if you want every possible advantage for your ONE THING to be applied by the class. So hook your learners as soon as possible.
A formal hook typically goes like this: “Today you will learn X so that you will receive Y” where X is your ONE THING and Y is the benefit or value that comes from it.
And here’s the cool thing for Latter-day Saints: Hooks are like covenants! When a person commits to the terms of a covenant, they receive specific promised blessings. God “hooks” us to him with the same basic technique that teachers and speakers use to motivate learners. You can use that same technique to motivate participants in your class.
I recommend that your hook be the first words out of your mouth. Cut right to the case instead of saying something like “I guess we’ll get started,” or “any announcements?”
Additionally, in the first few moments of class, at least for the first few in September, set at least the following expectations:
All questions and comments are welcome.
With limited time, you as the teacher will make wise judgments about which questions and comments can be made during class.
Some questions and comments will need to be saved for non-class time, such as ministering visits, family home evenings, and ward activities, and personal and family study.
Offload Often
This one is a powerful trick for expanding opportunities for learners to do the second thing listed above as a fundamental requirement for learning.
First, the obvious. The more you can offload things that don’t directly contribute to your ONE THING that you want learners to take away from class, the more time you will have for effective teaching.
But wait, there’s more!
When you offload something to time outside of class, you extend the time in which your audience can apply what they are learning and more deeply do the ONE THING you designed class to help them do.
Here’s what to offload and some ideas for how to offload them:
You can offload almost anything which not only will save you time, but will extend the reach of class. Note, though, that something has to go in class. Just keep class focused on your ONE THING and offload everything else.
Prepare to Summarize
Elder Christoffel Golden, then of the 70, visited my mission in Nebraska. One of the things he taught us was to prepare to share the message of the restoration, as described in Preach My Gospel, in various amounts of time. That first lesson can take an hour (it can take longer than that, but he encouraged us not to let it. It can take 30 minutes. Fifteen. Five.
At a slowly closing doorway, you may even need to teach the whole restoration in 30 seconds.
God loves his children and wants to bless them and their families. He has restored his gospel through prophets in these last days, and provided evidence you can hold in your hand, pray about, and receive a witness about that will change your life. Will you accept the invitation to read the Book of Mormon?
Like the methods described above, summarizing is really offloading. It should be short, yes, but the key feature is that it should invite more individual learning outside of the summary itself.
Even with the best-laid plans, you are bound to find yourself in situations where you do not have time to articulate your ONE THING, or something tangential you want to include despite the time constraints and my advice, in the depth you would like. So prepare to summarize.
After you have planned your lesson, write down the 30-second version of your ONE THING with its strongest supporting ideas. Practice saying the summary out loud, first by reading what you wrote, then with a few notes, then on your own.
This will have two effects:
It will give you what to say when class is coming to an end sooner than hoped.
It will give you just the right amount of rehearsal so your words (not limited to the summary) will be more polished when you deliver them live.
Engage learners in novel ways
Believe it or not, a hook is not enough. You have to reel the fish all the way in!
Here are some teaching techniques that work especially well to activate learning in a short lesson:
Warm-calling
Give learners 30 seconds to a minute to consider something (A scripture, quote, thought-provoking question) and then call on one or two of them by name to share their thoughts. This is the middle ground between cold-calling which is fast and asking for a volunteer, which often leads to delays.
Closed-ended questions
The open ended question, meant to solicit discussion, is the keystone of many Sunday School classes, but a closed ended question, which has a clearly-defined single answer, can inspire the mind as well.
Speed race
Challenging learners to do something (find a scripture, make a comment, etc.) the fastest will motivate them to help keep the pace brisk. This may sound like it’s suited for youth classes, but it works for adults too.
Visuals/objects
A picture says a thousand words, as they say, and a tactile experience is an even better shortcut. Just mind how long it takes to set up.
There are lots more novel ways to engage learners, and the key point is to vary your approach. Routines are great because they use familiarity as a shortcut, but sometimes active learning needs a little push.
Mix it up
Speaking of varying your approach, it’s okay to occasionally throw standardized practices out the window (including the ones I suggest in this post!).
Sometimes it’s okay to just have everyone crack open their scriptures and read together. A great opening question is “what has the spirit taught you during your scripture study this week” and let that same spirit lead class. You could do the whole class as a pair and share, a topical testimony meeting, a Q&A, a council, or a show and tell for tools of home study.
If every class strays from standard best practices, the variety may lose its power. But if you start by studying the scripture block and prayerfully deciding on one, singular goal for class, the world is your oyster for accomplishing that goal.
Conclusion
When I was initially grieving for the loss of Sunday School class time that comes with this announcement, the thought occurred to me that one of the hallmarks of the teachings of Jesus was brevity. The sermon on the mount is his longest sermon in the New Testament, and comes in at approximately 2,400 words in English translation. If his speaking pace was a little below average, say 100-120 words per minute, the whole sermon was about 20 minutes long. While I’ll miss the depth that a longer class allows (and even long for even longer deep-dives), I think this is an opportunity to focus, and really, to teach in the savior’s way.
In the spirit of focusing on ONE THING, consider what single technique you want to try in your next class. You don’t have to wait until September, and when you’ve mastered one skill, come back and pick up another.
A Request
If you’ve made it this far, please tell me what you think. Was this helpful? What other ideas do you have? I’ve thought about going deeper on each of these strategies with a series of YouTube videos or worksheets or something, and I’d be curious what you think of that.
I look forward to attending your classes in the future.
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