As a Sunday School class, The Refuge is a new expression of a great heritage of Christian education in the church. Sunday School originated around the year 1780 for the purpose of educating the poor, who could not afford to send themselves or their children to expensive private schools – the only means of formal education in that day and age. The classes provided a meaningful alternative to the various distractions and profanities with which folks could/would be amused. Sunday School provided meaning by teaching basic morality, physical cleanliness, and basic educational skills, which improved standards of behavior in the mindset of the poor. So, Sunday School became a way of reaching out to those who couldn’t help themselves, teaching them moral truth, biblical values, and basic academic skills, such a reading and writing.

FOUR-FOLD PURPOSE OF THE REFUGE
Since then, Sunday School classes have morphed and expanded to include a wide range of content and styles. Today, these classes exist for several purposes: (1) to be a community of fellowship and encouragement for believers; (2) to be a place for the instruction on the content and practice of Christian faith; (3) to be an introduction to the communal life of the body of Christ for those who have not yet placed their faith in Christ, as well as an entry-point where new believers can assimilate into the congregation; (4) to be a launching point for the ministry of the church.

It is these four purposes that one specific Sunday School class, The Refuge, hopes to promulgate and embody. Within our particular context there is a real need for all four of these purposes.

(1) The young adults and families of our congregation have had no consistent niche over the last several years. They are also the demographic who are forging their way in the world and laying foundational structures in their families and communities, all in the midst of the often chaotic landscape of post-modernity. It is our purpose to develop a community of fellowship and genuine ‘refuge’ for this segment of our congregation.

(2) Additionally, the church (universal) has always been a community in need of consistent, thorough, biblical teaching in order to remember its identity in the world, and know how to live out the Christian faith within a particular context. It is with the goal of instruction and dialog in mind that we gather on Sundays as a class – to be taught by God’s word and informed by the church’s tradition, our common and individual experiences, and our power of reasoning. We also carry this mindset into the small groups in which we gather throughout the week.

(3) Thirdly, our community must be a place that is constantly welcoming visitors and new believers. This is part of our commission from Jesus as his followers. A local body of Jesus’ followers that does not reach out to those who do not yet know and follow him fails to understand the core of the gospel itself, and positions itself to succumb to the many cultural and religious winds that blow throughout society. This act of reaching out and welcoming is an externally focused activity that pushes the church outside the walls of its building. It is also an internally focused action that forces us to reflect upon our attitudes toward one another and those not yet part of the body as we enter into one another’s presence each time we gather. The law of love that has been given to us as followers of Jesus must take an ever-deepening root in our lives personally and corporately if we are to live faithfully before God. Our class, then, is a venue for working out this law of love among one another.

(4) Finally, service is an extremely important element of our community. The apostle James deemed faith without works (i.e. action or behavioral follow-through) to be dead. If our community does not act out its faith within the community, then we are dead. With this in mind our class seeks to be a ministry effort on the front lines of service. We hope to coordinate as completely and efficiently as possible with various ministries already thriving in our church, and also those other churches and agencies that God would connect us with in our community to produce a harvest of fruit for the Kingdom.