Organizing and Building Up the Sunday School Part 6

1. =His Qualifications.= There are on the American continent not less than a million and a half Sunday-school teachers, who give to the gospel their free-will offering of time, and toil, and thought. They are not like civil engineers or the majority of public-school teachers, graduates of schools that have given them training for a special vocation. In every respect they are laymen, engaged for six days in secular work, and on one day finding an avocation in the Sunday school.

Yet there are certain traits, partly natural and partly acquired, which they must possess, if they are to find success in their Sabbath-day service.

(1) _A Sincere Disciple._ The Sunday-school teacher must be a follower of Christ, not merely in profession but in spirit. He is one who has met his Lord, has heard and has obeyed the call, "Follow me." He enlisted in the grand army of which Christ is the Commander, before he received his a.s.signment to the army corps of the Sunday school, and his fidelity to the department is inspired by his deeper loyalty to his Lord. It is eminently desirable that the Sunday-school teacher should be a member of the church; but it is imperative that he should be a disciple of Christ.

(2) _A Lover of Youth._ By far the largest proportion of scholars in the Sunday school, perhaps nine tenths, are under twenty-five years of age.

Therefore, with few exceptions, the teachers must deal with young people; and youth at all its stages is not easy to understand and to manage. Moreover, the fact that not only the teachers, but to a large extent the scholars, are volunteers enters into the problem. Pupils attend the week-day school and submit to a teacher's rule because they must, whether their teachers are acceptable or are disliked. But the rule in the Sunday school is not the law of authority; it is the law of persuasion. The teacher who cannot draw his scholars, but repels them, soon finds himself without a cla.s.s. In all teaching sympathy, or the coordination between the interest of the teacher in the pupil and of the pupil in the teacher, is a strong factor in success; but in the Sunday school it is an absolute necessity by reason of the voluntary element in the const.i.tution of the Sunday school. That mystic power which will combine uncongenial spirits, and fuse the hearts of teacher and scholar into one, is love. Let the teacher love his scholars, let him see in each pupil some quality to inspire love, and the battle is half won.

Love will quicken tact, and love and tact together will win the complete victory.

(3) _A Lover of the Scriptures._ Whatever the Sunday school of to-morrow may become, the Sunday school of to-day is preeminently a Bible school.

There are tendencies in our time which may in another generation render the Bible less prominent, and introduce into the Sunday school studies in church history, in social science, in moral reform, in missions, perhaps in comparative religion, or in some other departments of knowledge. But as yet the great text-book of the school is the Holy Scriptures. The volume should be in the hand of every teacher and of every scholar during the school session; and the teacher, especially, must study it during the week. If all of the Bible that he knows is contained in the paragraphs a.s.signed for the coming lesson, and the rest of the book is sealed to his eyes, he will be a very poor teacher. He needs to have his mind stored with a thousand facts, and to have these facts systematized, in order to teach ten; and the nine hundred and ninety which he knows will add all their weight to the ten which he tells.

(4) _A Willing Worker._ The teacher's love for Christ, for his scholars, and for his Bible is not to expend itself in emotion or even in study; it is to find expression in efficient service. A task is laid upon him which will demand much of his time and his power of body, mind, and spirit. He must be ready to meet his cla.s.s fifty-two Sundays in the year: on days of sunshine and days of storm; when he is eager for the work, and when he is weary in it; when his scholars are responsive, and when they are careless; when his fellow workers are congenial, and when they are anti-pathetic; when his lesson is easy to teach, and when it is hard. He must be regular in his service, not turned aside by opportunities of enjoyment elsewhere; and he must give to it all his powers and all his skill. Work such as this can be sustained only by an enduring enthusiasm, a devotion to the cause; and therefore the teacher must have his heart enlisted as well as his will.

As a Sunday-school teacher, then, four harmonious objects will claim a share in his love: his Lord, his scholars, his Bible, and his work.

2. =His Need of Training.= For two generations it was supposed that any person fairly intelligent, without special equipment, was fitted to be a Sunday-school teacher. There are found no records of training cla.s.ses in Sunday-school work earlier than 1855, when the Rev. John H. Vincent began to gather young people and train them for service in his Sunday school at Irvington, New Jersey. The seed of his "Palestine Cla.s.s" grew into the "Normal Cla.s.s"; and by 1869 there were in a few places cla.s.ses for the teaching of teachers in the Bible and Sunday-school work. It is not remarkable that Sunday-school teacher-training should be delayed so long after the organization of the first Sunday school, when it is remembered that in America the first Normal School for secular teachers was not founded until 1839. The Chautauqua movement, begun in 1874, gave a strong impetus to Sunday-school teacher-training; the state a.s.sociations and denominational organizations took up the work; and now teacher-training cla.s.ses are to be found in every state and province on the American continent. The thoroughly graded school includes in its system a cla.s.s for the training of young people who are to be teachers.

It is late in the day to inquire why the Sunday-school teacher needs training; but the question is often asked, and the answers are ready:

(1) _The General Principle._ All good work involves the prerequisite of training. Especially is this true of teaching; and there is a reason why the principle holds with regard to the Sunday-school teacher even more directly than with the secular teacher. While the subjects of teaching are vitally important, relating to character and efficient service, the time for teaching is short, less than an hour each week, in contrast to the twenty or twenty-five hours in the week-day school. To make an impression in so short a teaching period, with such long intervals between the lessons, demands that the teacher be one who possesses exceptional fitness for his work, and this superior fitness cannot be obtained without special and thorough training.

(2) _The Teacher's Responsibility._ All-important as is the work of religious teaching, for which the Bible is the chief text-book in the church, there is but one inst.i.tution in our time charged with that mighty duty, and that is the Sunday school. The Bible is rarely taught in the home, which should be the first place for teaching it; it is only incidentally taught in the pulpit, of which the aim is not so much instruction as inspiration. Practically all the teaching of the Bible now devolves upon the Sunday school, and the Sunday school only. If the Sunday schools of the world for one generation should fail to teach the word of life, the knowledge of that word would well-nigh cease. And the one person charged with that task, the one on whom the responsibility rests, is the Sunday-school teacher. He who is intrusted with so great a work, and upon whose fidelity the work depends, must have a proper equipment; and that equipment presupposes training.

(3) _The Demand of the Age._ We are living in an intellectual age, unparalleled in the history of the world. The boundaries of knowledge in every direction have widened, and in each realm the search is deeper and more thorough. Such wealth has been added through recent investigations to the store of Bible knowledge that most commentaries, expositions, and introductions of the past have now but slight value. Another exceedingly important realm that has been added to the domain of knowledge is that of child study, but recently an unexplored field, now open to every reader. In such a time as this the teacher who would impart the contents of the Bible to the young must have eyes and mind opened. He must know the results of modern investigation in the Scriptures and in the nature of those whom he teaches. His pupils are under the care of trained and alert specialists through the week; they must receive instruction from well-taught minds in the Sunday school.

(4) _The Teacher and His Cla.s.s._ The peculiar relation already referred to as existing between the Sunday-school teacher and his cla.s.s presents another incentive to training. His relation is not like that of the secular teacher, who speaks with authority, and can command attention and study. The teacher in Sunday school cannot require his scholars to learn the lesson; the authority of the parent is rarely employed to compel home study; and as a result most of our scholars come to the Sunday school unprepared. This is not the ideal or the ultimate condition, but unfortunately it is still the real condition in at least nine out of ten Sunday-school cla.s.ses. This condition makes the demand upon the teacher all the greater. Because his scholars are unprepared he must be all the better prepared. He must be able to awaken and arouse his pupils; he must inspire them to an interest in the lesson; he must so teach as to lead them into knowledge of the truth and a desire to seek it for themselves. Anyone can teach the scholar who is eager to learn; but to teach those who come to the cla.s.s unprepared and careless, to send them away with a clear-cut understanding of the lesson, and an awakened intelligence and conscience--all this, under the conditions of the Sunday-school teacher's task, and in his peculiar relation to his scholars, requires not only ability, but also thoroughly trained ability.

In view of all these considerations, it is not surprising that at the opening of the twentieth century the demand of the Sunday schools everywhere is for better teaching, and for teachers who have themselves been taught and are able to teach others.

XIV

THE TRAINING AND TASK OF THE TEACHER

1. =The Training Needed.= Many faithful workers in the Sunday school realize their need of preparation; but, while conscious of unfitness, they have no clear conception of the equipment which they require. What are those fields of knowledge which should be traversed by one who has been called to teach in the Sunday school? They comprise four departments: (1) the Book, (2) the scholar, (3) the school, and (4) the work.

(1) _The Book._ We have already noted that the Sunday school is differentiated from other systems of education in the fact that it uses mainly but one text-book, the Holy Scriptures. For that reason the teacher must first of all acquaint himself as thoroughly as possible with the contents of that wonderful volume. He should be a twentieth century Bible student; not a student or a scholar according to the light of the Middle Ages, or the seventeenth century, or even of the first half of the nineteenth century; for in all those periods the aims, the methods, and the scope of Bible study were different from those of the present time. He who is to teach the Bible successfully to-day must have some knowledge of the Bible in the following aspects:

(a) Its Origin and Nature. He must have a definite idea of how the sixty-six books of Scripture were composed, written, and preserved; and, as far as may be known, who were their authors.

(b) Its History. The Bible is, more than anything else, a book of history, containing the record of a people who received the divine revelation and preserved it. The divine revelation cannot be taught nor comprehended unless the annals of that remarkable people, the Israelites, be first read and understood. Therefore biblical history should be the first subject to be studied by the teacher in the Sunday school. The leading facts and underlying principles of that unique history must be understood; not in an outline of minute details, but as a general landscape, in which each lesson of the Bible will take its place.

(c) Its Geographical Background. The Bible brings before us a world of natural features which remain--seas, mountains, valleys, and plains; a world of political divisions which has pa.s.sed away; its empires, kingdoms, and tribal relations; and cities and towns, some of them now desolate, others in poverty and in ruin. The teacher who is to instruct his pupils must be able to see those abiding elements, and by the aid of his historical imagination to reconstruct those that have changed. He must make that ancient world of the Bible roll like a panorama before the eyes of his mind.

(d) Its Inst.i.tutions. Upon every page of the Bible are stamped pictures of manners, customs, inst.i.tutions, forms of worship, that are unfamiliar to our Christian, Anglo-Saxon, modern world. The teacher must become familiar with this local color of another civilization, and enable his cla.s.s to see it through his eyes.

(e) Its Ethical and Religious Teaching. In the past, and until a generation ago, the Bible was studied only for its doctrines. It was generally treated as one book, all written at once and by one author; its history, biography, inst.i.tutions, were pa.s.sed over as unimportant; while every sentence was searched for some light upon theology. From the Bible, by a.s.sorting and grouping its texts out of every book, a system of doctrine was constructed; and the mastery of this system with its proof-texts was regarded as the princ.i.p.al work of the Bible student.

That method of Bible study has justly fallen into disuse among modern scholars. The Bible is now looked upon as a record of life rather than as a treasury of texts. Yet its stream of ethical, religious, and spiritual teaching must be found and followed by the student who is to teach the truth; and the doctrines revealed through the Bible should be regarded as a necessary part of his training.

(2) _The Scholar._ One book must be studied closely by the teacher, and that is his pupils. During the last thirty years human nature in all its stages, as child, as youth, during adolescence, and in maturity--especially in the earlier periods--has been investigated as never before. The student in our time can enter into the results of special study upon these subjects. He needs to know what the best books can give him of child study and mind study; and to supplement book-knowledge in this department with watchful eyes and close thought upon the traits which he finds in his own scholars.

(3) _The School._ The teacher in the Sunday school needs to understand the inst.i.tution wherein he is a worker. The Sunday school is like the week-day school, yet unlike it; and the teacher must be able to appreciate at once what he can follow and what he should avoid in the methods of the secular school. The history of the Sunday-school movement, its fundamental principles, its organization, officers, methods of management, and aims--all these are in the scope of the teacher's preparation.

(4) _The Work._ Whether on Sunday or on Monday, a teacher is after all a teacher, and the laws of true teaching are the same in a Sunday school, in a public school, and in a college. The application of those laws may vary according to the ages of pupils, the subjects of instruction, and the aims of the inst.i.tution, but the principles are unchanging. Those enduring principles of instruction are well understood, are set down in text-books, and can easily be learned by a student. There are successful teachers who know these principles by an intuition that they cannot explain; but most people will save themselves from many mistakes and comparative failure by a close study of modern educational methods.

In some way knowledge in all these four great departments of training should be obtained by the teacher, if possible, before he enters upon his task; but if he has missed earlier opportunities of preparation he must acquire this knowledge even while he is teaching. The outlines of such a course of study should be given in the training cla.s.s for young people; and such a training cla.s.s should be regarded as essential to every well-organized school.[11]

2. =The Teacher's Task.= All the preparation briefly outlined in these last paragraphs is only preparatory to the work which the teacher is to do in his vocation. The task set before the teacher is fourfold:

(1) _As a Student._ The studies named above are not completed when the teacher has pa.s.sed out of the training cla.s.s with a certificate of graduation. The public-school teacher who ceases to study after finishing the course of the normal school is foredoomed to failure. The training cla.s.s or the training school has only outlined before the teacher the fields to be traversed, and shown him a few paths which he may follow. He who has undertaken to teach a group of scholars, whether in the Beginners Department, the Senior Department, or any grade between them, must continue his studies, in the Bible, in the specific course of graded lessons which he is teaching, and in general knowledge; for there is no department of thought or action which will not bring tribute to the teacher, to be turned into treasure for his cla.s.s. The Sunday-school teacher must ever maintain an open mind, a quick eye, and a spirit eager for knowledge. His acc.u.mulation will prove a store upon which to draw for teaching; and even that unused will give its weight to truth imparted to his cla.s.s.

(2) _As a Friend._ The teacher is more than a student dealing with books; he is a living soul in contact with living souls. If the most masterly lesson teaching in the realm of thought could be spoken into a phonograph, and then ground out before a cla.s.s, it would fail to teach, for it would utterly lack the human element. Knowledge counts for much in teaching, but personality counts for far more. If a teacher is to be successful he must have a close relationship with his cla.s.s. They must know him, he must know them, and there must be a common interest, nay, a common affection, between the two personalities of teacher and pupil. He must be a friend to each one of his scholars, schooling himself, if need be, to friendship; and each of his scholars must be made to realize that his teacher is his friend. This personal affection need not always be stated in words. The teacher who constantly a.s.sures his scholars that he loves them will not be believed as readily as the one who shows his love in his spirit and his acts, even though he may refrain from affectionate forms of speech.

(3) _As a Teacher._ Teaching requires more than the possession of an abundant store of information upon any subject. He is not a teacher who simply pours forth upon the ears of his pupils an undigested ma.s.s of facts, however valuable those facts may be. The true teacher after large preparation a.s.sorts his material, and selects such matter as is appropriate to his own cla.s.s. This he arranges in a form to be readily received, thoroughly comprehended, and easily remembered. He comes before his cla.s.s with the fixed purpose that every pupil shall carry away with him a knowledge of the lesson, and shall not forget it. He must awaken the pupil's attention; for talking to an inattentive group of people accomplishes no more than preaching to tombstones in a graveyard. He must obtain the cooperation of the pupil's interest, and induce him to think upon the subject. He must call forth from his pupil some expression of his thought in language, for one is never sure of his knowledge until he has shaped it into words; and that which the pupil has stated he is much surer to remember than that which he has merely heard. Teaching, then, involves (1) selection of material, (2) adaptation of material, (3) presentation of truth, (4) awakening thought, (5) calling forth expression, (6) fixing knowledge in the memory.

(4) _As a Disciple._ It is the teacher's task not only to impart to his scholars valuable information about the Bible, about G.o.d, about Christ, and about salvation; but, far more than imparting an intellectual knowledge, to bring the living word into relation with living souls, to inspire a fellowship of his pupils with G.o.d, to have Christ founded within them, to make salvation through Christ their joyous possession.

Nor is his work as a working disciple accomplished when all his scholars have become Christians in possession and profession, and members of Christ's Church. By his example and his teachings he should lead them to efficient service for Christ in the church, in the community, and in the state. There is work for every member in the church, and work for everyone possessing the spirit of Christ in the community. Whatever may have been the type of a saint in the twelfth century, or in the sixteenth, or even in the early nineteenth century, in these stirring, strenuous years of the twentieth century the disciple of Christ is a man among men or a woman among women, active in the effort to make the world better, and to establish in his own village, or town, or ward of the city, the kingdom of heaven on earth. To inspire his scholars for such labors, and to lead them, is the supreme opportunity and work of the teacher.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] For detailed methods and plans, see the volume of this series on The Training of Sunday School Teachers.

XV

THE CONSt.i.tUENCY OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

1. =Relation to the Community.= The Sunday school is a temple built of living stones; and the quarry from which they are taken in the rough, to be cut and polished for their places in the building, is the entire community in which the school is placed. In our time, more than ever before, the reasons are imperative why special study should be given to the community from which the school must draw its members. Certain principles of administration will become apparent when once the field is carefully considered.

(1) _Const.i.tuency Adjacent._ The population from which a given Sunday school draws its members must be generally that immediately around it.

Some teachers and scholars may come from a distance, but even in this age of convenient transit by trains and trolley cars, it is found that, taking the church building as a center, the const.i.tuency of the Sunday school in a city is mostly within a radius of half a mile, and in the country within a mile. Throughout that sphere of influence the church should look well to the population, should know its proportionate elements, as far as possible should come into acquaintance with the families, and should plan to win, to evangelize, and to hold all its natural following.

(2) _Membership Representative._ Upon general and almost invariable principles, the Sunday school should represent all the elements of the population within its environment. If it be a residence section with isolated houses, each containing but one family of well-to-do people, the church is apt to be a family church, and a large Sunday school must not be looked for, since large mansions rarely contain large families.

If, on the other hand, the neighborhood be populous, characterized by varied strata of society--a few rich, a goodly number fairly prosperous, and a greater ma.s.s of wage-earners, yet the section as a whole American and not foreign in its civilization--then a flourishing, active, and growing Sunday school should be expected. And it should embrace all these elements, the rich, the middle cla.s.s, and the wage-earners, in the proportion which each bears to the community as a whole. If the school in such a population be small, or if it be composed exclusively of one cla.s.s, whether it be the so-called better cla.s.s or the mission cla.s.s, there is a serious error in its policy. The true Sunday school should be representative of all the elements in the population. It is both a crime and a blunder to limit the efforts of a Sunday school to one cla.s.s of society: a crime, because such a school leaves mult.i.tudes around it to perish; and a blunder, because the effort results in an anaemic, dwindling, dying inst.i.tution.

(3) _Methods Adapted._ Almost every community, whether in city or in country, possesses some traits peculiar to itself. There may be two towns ten miles apart, one the wealthy residential suburb of a city, the other a settlement surrounding a great factory. The population of these two places will be in marked contrast, and the methods of Christian work successful in one will utterly fail in the other. One street or avenue in a city may mark the boundary line between family churches and mission churches. Within ten minutes' walk of each other may stand two churches of the same denomination, yet so utterly apart in spirit as to possess nothing in common but name. It is possible that each of these two organizations might learn something from the other, and might do their Master's work better by a closer community of interest and feeling. Yet it would be a mistake to introduce into either church all the plans that are successful in the other; or to reject in one Sunday school any method because it has proved a failure in another and a different field. The work of each church and Sunday school must be adapted to the population from which its membership is to be drawn.

2. =The Changing Population.= One of the most imperative questions confronting the gospel worker, both in the church and the Sunday school, arises from the constant changes taking place in our population. In the cities we see stately churches, once thronged, now well-nigh desolate, while their walls echo to the tread upon the sidewalk of a churchless mult.i.tude. In front of a fine old church, where once millionaires worshiped, the writer has often pa.s.sed a news-stand upon which are for sale newspapers in seven different languages. And too often one finds that the churches of a generation ago have been turned into low theaters, or torn down, giving place to stores and office buildings. The general principle may be laid down, that a church in the city almost never lives more than one generation in the same building and with the same character. After thirty years as the very longest period, if it is to retain its members, it must follow them in the march up-town; or if it is to retain its location and still hold a congregation it must seek an absolutely new const.i.tuency, and to this end must transform its methods of work. Nor are these migrations of population confined to the city. The towns and villages are governed by the same law of change. A village, once the seat of quiet homes, is suddenly turned into a factory town, with a new and strange population. The farms on country roads, abandoned by the families that formerly tilled them, are occupied by foreigners of alien speech and manners. The building of a railroad will open new towns, and at the same time will make more than one deserted village. These changes in population must be considered in their relation to the work of the Sunday school. The movement will be characterized by varied traits in different places.

(1) _A Growing Population._ The change may be that of a healthy growth in population, making the community a desirable place for a church and a Sunday school. Such a development is constantly taking place in the newer portions of a city, whose population is moving from the center to the rim; or it may be noted in suburban towns, as facilities of transportation bring new residents from the metropolis; or it may appear in villages springing up on the line of a railroad, where home-seekers are settling and building habitations. Leaders in church and Sunday-school work must watch these growing centers, and provide wisely for their religious needs. It will not suffice to wait for these newcomers to build their own churches and organize their own Sunday schools. Most of them are taxed to the utmost in building or buying their own homes, and will scarcely realize their need until the habit of neglecting worship has become fixed, and their children grow up without religious education. The old and strong churches must extend a hand to the settlers, must preempt church sites at the very beginning, must help to erect chapels, for a time must supply workers, and must set the current of the new settlement G.o.dward and churchward. The reward of their labor and their liberality will not long be delayed.

(2) _A Declining Population._ There are places where the population has lessened, making the work of the Sunday school increasingly difficult and its results meager. It may be in the city, where business has crowded away the dwellers of other years, as in the lower end of Manhattan Island in New York. There tall office buildings and warehouses stand on sites formerly occupied by churches, but no longer needed, now that almost the only residents are the janitors and their families, living on the roofs of the towerlike temples of trade. But oftener the region of the declining population is found in the country. Villages once prosperous have gradually lost their inhabitants. In places where three or four churches, each with its Sunday school, were formerly well supported, there is now scarcely a const.i.tuency for one. Yet all these churches, though decayed and dying by inches, are still maintained; and each church still houses a discouraged Sunday school, attended by a faithful few, but with no hope of growth and an imminent peril of extinction. If loyalty to a denomination could give way to love for the kingdom of Christ, these might be consolidated into one church and one Sunday school for all the community. We venture the prophecy that before the twentieth century comes to its close this will be throughout the American continent the accepted settlement of the question. May its fulfillment be not long delayed! In the meantime these decayed but still enduring Sunday schools and churches in a community should seek for peace and friendship, not emphasizing the points of doctrine or of system that differ, but those that agree, and striving to maintain the unity of the spirit in a bond of love.