Part 2: What Is the Ideal Balance of Age Groups in a Growing Sunday School?

There are so many factors which impact Sunday School growth. Certainly, prayer and the leadership of God are primary factors. On the human side, it is important for the church not to be in conflict. Organization and structure make a difference: is the Sunday School organized with enough leaders and classes for growth? Are Sunday School leaders working a plan? Do Sunday School leaders and members desire new people to join? Do they expect growth? Also, it is usually easier to grow when the community is growing.

Along with these issues and factors, there are hundreds of additional methods which can encourage growth. Andy Anderson talked about many in his book, The Growth Spiral. Josh Hunt talks about many in his book, You Can Double Your Class in Two Years or Less. David Francis talked about many in his books, Five Step Formula for Sunday School Growth and 3D Sunday School. These methods ranged from training teachers to visitation, from giving Friday night to Jesus to zone offense, and from providing space to enlisting workers.

In many ways, this issue of an ideal balance of age groups is an issue of organization and structure which has impact on the growth potential of Sunday School. In thinking through my belief that there might be an ideal balance of age groups which is more likely to be present in a growing Sunday School, I believe Andy Anderson deserves the credit. Andy became convinced through experience and then through years of research that many churches organize to decline. When churches combine classes, reduce teachers and workers, and slow or stop training and contacting, they are removing structure which supports the weight of current attendance. Removing structure in Sunday School is like removing the structure underneath the first hill on a roller coaster. A collapse is imminent. Organizing to grow says much about a church’s expectations.

I have only begun to analyze the statistical data, but allow me to share age group statistics from 1,588 reporting churches for 2001-2006. The table below shows age groups as columns and church size as rows. There were 471 churches who grew by 10% or more over the five year period (average of at least 2% growth per year). There were 683 churches who declined by 10% or more over the period (average of at least 2% decline per year). There were also 434 plateaued churches who grew or declined less than 10% over the period (this data is not shown in the table).

	# Churches	<6	6-11	12-17	18-24	25-34	35-54	55+
GROWTH
<50	202	10.3%	14.1%	13.2%	4.7%	7.9%	17.8%	32.0%
50-99	134	10.0%	13.7%	13.3%	6.3%	10.0%	18.0%	28.7%
100-199	81	10.0%	14.4%	13.6%	6.3%	10.6%	18.0%	27.0%
200+	54	10.2%	13.4%	13.0%	8.0%	11.1%	20.9%	23.5%
DECLINE
<50	408	7.8%	12.3%	11.0%	4.4%	7.1%	17.5%	39.9%
50-99	166	9.5%	12.3%	12.0%	6.4%	9.3%	17.2%	33.2%
100-199	80	9.4%	12.6%	12.7%	6.6%	11.4%	14.4%	33.0%
200+	29	7.5%	10.9%	14.0%	5.9%	8.7%	17.4%	35.6%

What do you see in the table? What are the differences between growing and declining Sunday Schools in distribution of age groups? Allow me to make three quick observations:

1. there are higher percentages of preschoolers and children in growing churches,
2. there are higher percentages of adults 55+ in declining churches, and
3. there are higher percentages of youth in growing churches except the largest ones.

How does your Sunday School compare? Not sure? Take a look this week. Pray and ask God to help you to organize the Sunday School ministry in expectancy of His blessings of more people for which to care. Be revolutionary!