Christian Science Sunday School can bless, no matter what the size of the class. I learned this last year when I joined a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, in the small town where I attended college. After I was appointed to teach in the Sunday School, I found I got a great deal from the added study and preparation of the Lesson-Sermon In the Christian Science Quarterly that teaching involved, and I looked forward to each Sunday morning as a chance to discover and share.
Our Sunday School, however, was quite small, and I was sometimes tempted to doubt its effectiveness. In my former Sunday School I was used to having several people share ideas during class discussion. A larger enrollment would, I thought, make the class more interesting. I soon found out, though, that effectiveness doesn't come from numbers. Didn't Christ Jesus say, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them"? Matt. 18:20
I taught the youngest class—one boy with a lot of questions! Some time after I began teaching, this boy's father told me how his son had recently confessed to stealing twenty dollars from his father's wallet. The boy had said that a discussion in Sunday School of the third tenet of Christian Science, in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, about the overcoming of sin, had made him decide to return the money. That tenet reads: "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts." Science and Health, p. 497 He'd described in detail what he'd learned that morning in Sunday School that had made him want to give back the twenty dollars. His discomfort in telling the story showed how sorry he was.
