Other Sunday School Endeavors
Other Sunday School Endeavors
Observation, Law, Theory
In January 2021 I taught a brief series on scientific terms and concepts and how they interact with Christian faith.
Angels: Their Places in Biblical Worlds
In December 2020, as Jeff Satterfield took a sabbatical from teaching Sunday School, Gilmour taught a brief, 3-part series on angels and the different roles they play in different Biblical narratives, along with the ways that Christian and Christian-inflected traditions after the New Testament have run with those narratives and teachings.
Where We Come From
This four-part series was a discussion of the historical forces that surround and set the agenda for the Stone-Campbell movement in four rough periods: the early American republic, the rise of the German-style university in America, the schisms within the movement, and the post-denominational present. If I do this sort of series again, I might arrange it the same, but I’ll be sure to teach it during the school year so that I can put some more library time into it.
- Where We Come From week 1
- Where We Come From week 2
- Where we Come from week 3
- Where we Come from week 4
History of the Bible and Bible Translation
I didn’t teach these lessons consecutively or even to the same group, but they seem to belong together.
In 2020, during the CoViD-19 pandemic, I taught a five-part series on the canonization process in particular, and here are those lessons, which I called “Family Stories.”
The History of Christmas
In the four weeks before we left to visit family for Christmas 2008, the Theos Seekers class (never mind the bad declension) at Athens Christian Church asked me to teach a series on the history of Christmas. I’m not fully accustomed to doing historical lessons in Sunday school, but the topic seemed fun enough, so here are those handouts.
- History of Christmas Part One: Roman Origins and Christian Responses
- History of Christmas Part Two: The Height of Christian Christmas
- History of Christmas Part Three: Wars on Christmas and the Rise of Kris Kringle
- History of Christmas Part Four: Technology and Christmas
- History of Christmas Part Five: Latter-Day Wars on Christmas
Angels
In a Sunday school series leading up to Christmas 2007, by request of the class, I taught a series on the history and development of angel-language in biblical and Christian traditions. On December 23, while I was in Indiana, Jan Westfall finished the series with a lesson on the Annunciation narratives and their angels.
Handouts from Sunday School
Links to Texts about Angels
- Celestial Hierarchy (c. 5th century)
- The Story of C?dmon and C?dmon’s Song (7th and 8th Centuries)
- The Monk’s Tale (14th century)
- Paradise Lost (17th century)
- America: A Prophecy (18th century)
- Demonology (19th century)
- A Christmas Carol (19th century)
- Angels in America (20th century)
Links to Movies about Angels and Angel-Like Critters