I, Justus L, am a retired (2010) teacher from a high school. In Trivandrum district in 1973-78 period I was instrumental in God’s hand to start five churches by giving free tuition to school going children in five places . In 1990-92 I published a prophetical book in Chennai named “GULF WAR 1991- BIBLICAL PREDICTION FULFILLED” in different languages. After moving to Kerala on a job transfer I served as the Sunday School Director of A G Malabar District from 1998 untill 2014. During this period, by God’s grace I was able to publish 15 Sunday school books for five different grades in Malayalam and one teachers training manual. As part of my active engagement in evangelism programs in Palakkad district in different capacities such as leading Bharatapuzha convention, Gideon International etc., God led me to see what is going on North Indian churches in the area of Sunday schools. Accordingly I visited churches in Delhi, U P, Punjab and Chhattisgarh with Rev. Laurance, Principal, Hebron Public School, Hapu,r U P. to look at this in greater depth. Pastor Vincent Bhaskaran, New Delhi and Rev. Jayaraj of A G church, Ludhiana were also a part of this.
In many of the North Indian churches we saw that children below the age of 12 were called separately during Sunday worship for a children's class. They were taught some preliminary Bible stories, action songs etc. None of the teachers used any prescribed text book. They seem to scribble that day’s lesson on a piece of paper without any pre-planning and did not have any revision tests etc. Is this the situation in secular schools? Secular schools teach children from the age of 3 or 4 and continue till the age of 17 or 18 in the +2 level dividing the classes in age groups. All of the teachers we met, expressed the desire to have systematic text books. Some pastors of North India were using on the spot translations of Sunday School books brought from South India as part of their teaching. This state of affairs saddened me; that we did not have proper Sunday school material even after 77 years of Independence! To solve this stalemate I contacted many pastors in North India. Finally Pastor Laurance and Pastor Vincent Bhaskaran and I prayed and decided to publish the A G Malabar District Sunday school books into Hindi. When English medium students and teachers demanded its English version God led me/us to print the same with more modifications in English
Justus Lazar, M.A., B.Ed., B.R.E., Former Sunday School Director of AG, Malabar District
Ex- Sr. Teacher of Central School
A brochure was prepared highlighting the importance and detailed syllabus of the books which was presented at A G Kolkata conference in May 2012. We were able to engage translators from different parts of India of which a few were volunteers. Now these are the official books for A G, New India Church of God, I P C in a few states, Central India Pentecostal Churches, Itarsi, India Mission Bihar, Reach Rajasthan of Rev. Y Yohannan, Filadelfia Churches of Rev Paul Mathew, Udaipur. These books are widely used in all the Hindi speaking states. These books are at present in the process of being translated into Gujarati and Odiya. Its English version is used by the Bombay Region of A G churches and is available through email. In the near future North India will become like the south in the field of Christian education laying a strong foundation for Christian culture which is bedrock of many great revivals in the past in different parts of the world.
