Television reality shows, video games, and iPods all compete for the attention of children, and how we share the gospel with them. Sharing Christ and the principles of God’s word with children must be achieved in an innovative and effective manner. Ineffectiveness means losing the opportunity and wasting one’s energies. Sunday school lessons can be a vital life-transforming tool used by God. Dedicated Sunday school teachers are of the highest positions of service, since research suggests that most believers make their decisions for Christ as children. “Encourage the little children to come unto Me,” Jesus said.

Not all Sunday school lessons, however, are changing lives for God. By applying five principles that will inspire you and transform your teaching, your lesson can become a life-changing mechanism used by God to transform your students. Practicing these principles will, most importantly, change your life … and provide encouraging results. Practicing these principles will enable teaching with purpose, power, and, ultimately, progress. Seeing students respond to challenges to accept Christ and to live for Him is a reward in itself. These five principles for successful, life-changing Sunday school lessons include prayer, personalization, preparation, planning, and prearrangements. Like “P’s” in a pod, these bring life to your teaching and your lesson.

Prayer: Before beginning any Sunday school lesson preparation, begin with prayer. Start with yourself: Confess your sins, and pray for God to use you. Pray for God to speak to you during the week, for the filling of the Holy Spirit, and for clarity of what God desires to accomplish in you and your students. Pray for class members by name and their special needs as expressed in and out of class. Ask God to lead you through each step of the lesson preparation and to speak to your own heart.

Personalize: As God speaks to your heart during the week, open up and accept the lesson personally. He is working on you. Read the scriptures you anticipate teaching. Consider what God is saying to you in the passages in question. Meditate on these; reflect, confess, and rejoice on what you have read. It is God’s love letter to you. This cannot be accomplished through preparation the night before teaching. This is a vital ingredient that you have bathed in the scripture passage(s) all week. Do not skip this step! It is vital.

Preparation: After God has made your scripture passage real to you, read the Sunday school quarterly materials provided. Determine the message, the means and the mode to get this truth across. Identify a few key points or words; focus on these. Create at least one application question for each key point that will help Sunday school members apply these scriptural truths to their everyday lives. Do not stand in a class and read to your students. Students need to hear from you how scripture has worked in you and see real-life examples, for you are God’s billboard.

Plan: Create a step-by-step plan or outline how you will present the material to the class. It should be brief and user-friendly. Remember to accommodate visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles by planning a variety of different approaches. Plan different ways to teach each week: small groups, whole group discussion, fill-in-the-blank lecture notes. Realize that acting out a part is always more exciting and useful than just telling it. Include pictures of Bible places, use modern-day illustrations or objects to illustrate a point, or dress as a character and tell the story (they will love it!). Plan surprises for the class so no one ever wants to miss what might be happening in your class on any given week. Plan for class to be exciting times of learning.

Prearrange: Always arrive early to the Sunday school class so that the room can be set up to facilitate learning. Pray for the regulars and the visitors. Surrender yourself to Christ and invite the Holy Spirit to be the presenter. He empowers the messenger-teacher. Greet members by name and welcome them to the class, making each one feel special and important.

For over 350 years, the Sunday school teacher has been the most effective tool for changing lives through the truths of God’s word, while instilling a desire to walk closer and more intimately with Christ. In applying these five simple principles, one can begin to see God move in the lives of students, big or small. The “powerful” P’s provide you with the initial personal transformation … and it must start here — followed, then, by transformation in the lives of your students. God wants to bless you with fruits of your labor. Pray for it, pray for your students. Make the lesson personal and applicable to them, today. Plan, brainstorm, be creative and seek to grab their attention. Prepare your classroom to make it conducive to learning. Greet students and talk to them, showing you care. Then, all that God has bottled up in you during the entire week should come out in a fruitful, life-changing lesson. Powerful and purposeful is the key to Sunday school lessons that change lives. Be faithful in your part, and God will be faithful in His. He will use you as an instrument to make the difference in the lives of your students.