Pastor Eric Earhart
Upper Room Assembly
Gatesville, NC,
2002—6; 2003—40, a 566.7% increase
We’re a new church plant. We started with Brother Paul Drost. AGUS Missions did a promotion for “Every Church a Planter or a Partner.” We came out of the Carpenters Shop church that is featured on the video. You can catch a glimpse of us on the video. We started with a core group of six people. We began to grow rapidly in worship service attendance, but the Sunday School wasn’t effective. The same 3 or 4 women and 1 or 2 men would come. The women would talk, but the men sat with their arms folded. I didn’t grow up in church myself, so I had no former Sunday School experience to depend on. I was reading the Word of God about getting your house in order. As I prayed about Sunday School, I decided to separate the adult Sunday School into two classes—one for men and one for women. Immediately, we began to see the fruit of being obedient to the Lord. Almost immediately, six or eight men came. Now we have 20 men coming. We also made the men’s and women’s ministry directors staff level positions. Each is in charge of all ministries to men and women in the church, including Sunday School. This is part of why our Sunday School has been so effective. It’s not just Sunday School but it’s their ministry time.
In 14 months the church grew from six in worship to over 100. Everyone is amazed because the church is in a town of 240 people. There’s one stoplight in the whole county of 10,000 people. Upper Room Assembly is the only multi-racial church in the whole county. The Sunday School growth reflects the overall awesome work God is doing in our church.
The small group ministry of Sunday School is where life-changing growth really takes place. In the worship service there can be an awesome word or prophecy that encourages the congregation or convicts them for that moment, but real life growth comes out of Sunday School.
As soon as I started the church, I received a Sunday School Starter Kit and a video on discipleship in Sunday School. I think the national office is doing a good job of supporting the local ministry of Sunday School. The encouragement I received from them right off the bat encouraged me to go ahead and try Sunday School. And the Lord helped me tweak it. Even now I walk into the two classes: the women are singing, the men are debating deep issues. The women speak on a woman’s level. And the men are in tune with each other.
I intend to begin to promote Sunday School even more. New families who move to the country will receive an invitation to the Sunday School where they can meet and get to know people who live here too.
