sunday school

Rebekah Yergo is entering her fifth year as the Church School Director at St. John Chrysostom Antiochian Orthodox Church in York, PA. The church school enrolls an average of 80 students, with classes organized by groups of 2-3 grade levels and high school students together in one class. Many thanks to Rebekah for being willing to share her experience with other directors. 

How were you called to this role/what led you to this role?

An opening became available and our parish priest approached me and asked me if I would serve. There are moments in time that you just know it’s a ‘God moment’. This was one of them for me because I said yes, just as he completed the initial question and without any elaborating. I felt this bubbling up, overwhelming yes come out of my mouth before it even registered in my brain what the question was. There are only a couple of other times I’ve felt this way about a path I’ve followed, and I’ve got to say, I like it when God makes it that obvious. It has been a fantastic journey so far.

Which curricula do you use for Sunday classes?

We have an eclectic mix; a couple of our seasoned teachers have created their own that best fits their classroom needs. We have a couple of classes that use the Greek courses and some that use varying OCEC offerings. Every third year we offer The Way, The Truth, The Life for grades 7-9. We have not found a consistent plan that works for all our teachers and all our students.

by Fr. Richard L. Tinker
from The Word, November 1966

A short time ago I was discussing religious education with a Roman Catholic priest. I have always felt that it is a good idea to shop around for ideas, moving on the assumption that someone else may have solved or at least learned to live with a problem that is currently troubling you.

The priest described himself to me as one who was “up to his neck” in religious education. His parish is a large one: over six thousand parishioners attend Sunday Masses, the earliest of which begins at 5: 30 am. His parochial school, a huge complex of three buildings, educate nearly five thousand students, many of whom are not even members of his parish. The priest also directly supervises the Released Time Religious Education Program. Under provisions of the program, hundreds of students are released from the Public Schools in the neighborhood an hour early on a specified day each week in order to attend special religious instruction classes in his school. When they arrive, they are taught by dedicated nuns especially trained for that work. The classes are conducted in modern classrooms, furnished with beautifully illustrated textbooks, and crammed with the latest audio-visual aids. I remarked that he was working under near perfect circumstances, and that his program must be succeeding rather well.

He nodded, sat back, and with a wry smile, said: “I wish it were, Father. The plain fact is that we are not. Oh, the kids come, all right. They learn a lot about the Church, but I’m pretty sure that we are going to lose most of them.”