How Sunday School Started

Many people have heard of Sunday school. Most have no idea where it came from. In 1780 a Jesus-follower in Great Britain named Robert Raikes could not stand the cycle of poverty and ignorance that was destroying little children, a whole generation. 

He said, "The world marches forward on the feet of little children." So he took children who had to work size days a week in squalor. Sunday was their free day. He said, "I'm going to start a school for free to teach them to read and write and learn about God." He did, and he called it "Sunday school."

Within fifty years, there were 1.5 million children being taught by 160,000 volunteer teachers who had a vision for the education of a generation. Sunday school was not a privatized, optional program for church kids. It was one of the great educational volunteer triumphs of the world.

From Who Is This Man: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus, by John Ortberg