Sunday schools, we hear, have had their day. Attendance is falling off and their influence on church and community is less and less with each passing year. But don’t sell the Sunday school short! It still reaches far more children with solid moral and biblical instruction than all other agencies of the church combined. Taken as a whole, Sunday schools of today are infinitely better than those of 50 years ago. They are more efficiently organized, physical plants are more functional, teaching aids are more plentiful, teachers are better qualified and better prepared, and curricula are better balanced—more biblical, better written, and more attractively packaged. In short, Sunday schools are a lot better. Marlene Lefever provides us with a careful, critical, but also encouraging analysis and evaluation of the quality of current Sunday school curricula and other lesson materials.
With this issue we sadly bid farewell to Donald Tinder, who leaves us to join the faculty of New College, Berkeley, California. For the past decade, Dr. Tinder has faithfully served CHRISTIANITY TODAY as book editor. Libraries especially will miss his insightful commentary on religious literature. To replace Dr. Tinder, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has been fortunate in securing as book editor Dr. Walter Elwell, formerly chairman of the religion department at Belhaven College in Mississippi, presently professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, and general editor of the Tyndale Family Encyclopedia, and as deputy editor Professor Paul Fromer, former editor of HIS magazine (Inter-Varsity) and now associate professor of English, Wheaton College, and free-lance writer.
