The Boy and the Sunday School Part 3

VI

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK WITH BOYS

Five fundamental principles must be kept in mind when work with boys in the Sunday school is attempted, and without these five principles very little will be accomplished:

1. _The first of these is the Fourfold Life_. A boy lives physically, socially, and mentally, as well as spiritually. He lives seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, not merely an hour or an hour and a half on Sunday. His spiritual impulses are received and find their expression in the physical, social and mental activities in which he is engaged during the week. Any work that is attempted with a group of boys which ignores this fourfold life of the boy cannot be a success. The man, then, who plans to work with boys must plan to touch the various phases of the boys' lives as he works with them, and he must also do this work in proportion, not putting too much emphasis on any one phase, but allowing equal emphasis on all. The ideal for a perfect work with boys is that which is gleaned from a study of the boyhood of Christ, for the boy Jesus, "grew in wisdom" (mentally), "and in stature" (physically), "and in favor with G.o.d" (spiritually), "and with man" (socially). The secret of the life of the Christ as a boy lies in his symmetrical and well-balanced growth.

2. _The second principle is Progression._ In a successful church work with boys the activities must be graded and progressive. The public school could not command the presence of a boy if the work which it gave him today was the same as that of last week, and that of last week the same as that of a year ago. The inherent interest of the public school to a boy is that he is discovering new things for himself, or being taught new things all the while. This principle must be incorporated in church and Sunday school work to keep the continued interest of the boy.

It must be observed, not only in Bible study (and this should be graded), but also in the physical, social, mental and service activities in which the boy finds himself engaged.

3. _The third principle is Service_. Too long has the church bribed her boys and expected them to remain with her and in her service after offering them wages for doing the thing which they ought to have done for sheer love of it. Socials and clubs and athletic organizations and other devices have been used as a bid to hold the boy, instead of being used because the church owed these things to the boy as part of his all-round development. "Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also"; and it stands to reason that the heart of the boy will be where he is giving most of himself. If he is investing himself heavily in the interest and service of the church, that is where his interest will be.

4. _The fourth principle is Organisation_.

The law of the boy life in adolescence is organization, or the gang.

The church has its choice, either to let the boys organize themselves on the outside, under self-directed and therefore incompetent leadership, or to organize the boys on the inside of the church, provide a definite place for this organization, and so permeate the gang instinct with the spirit of Christian altruism. Every church organization for boys, the organized Bible cla.s.s, the church club, and other church forms of organization, are aiming to do just this thing. The law of the boy's life is to a.s.sociate with his fellows and the expression of his purposes is team work. The church, through suitable organization, can meet this need of the boy life.

5. _The fifth and last principle is Leadership_. Leadership is inseparable from organization, and organization is useless without leadership. The leadership which is necessary for a group of adolescent boys is that of a man, and the problem which is presented to a leader with a group of boys in the adolescent years is not that of teaching, but of awakening virile ideas and purposes in the boy life. The leader must be able to enter into sympathy with and in at least a partial way into partic.i.p.ation with all the activities of the group. Everything that a boy does is just the thing that the man used to do. There is, therefore, little hardship, but instead the joy of living again, when a man becomes the leader of a group of boys.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

Alexander (Editor).--Boy Training (.75).

Boys' Work Message (Men and Religion Movement) ($1.00).

Robinson.--The Adolescent Boy in the Sunday School (_American Youth_, April, 1911) (.20).

VII

METHOD AND ORGANIZATION

=Organization=

By organization is meant, of course, boy organization, the form of organization that attempts to keep the adolescent boy tied up to the interests of the church. Today the forms of organization for this purpose are legion, and strangely enough every such form but one has its headquarters outside of the local church it seeks to serve. The one exception is the form known as the Boys' Organized Bible Cla.s.s, an integral part of the Sunday school with no allegiance of any sort or kind to any organization but the local church of which it is a part--bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh, muscle of its muscle.

These organizations that flourish in our modern church life naturally fall into three cla.s.ses: religious, semi-religious and welfare. Other nomenclature, characterizing them might be used, and would be by their founders, but these words cla.s.sify them for the purpose of our investigation. The _religious_ organizations have for their sole aim the deepening of the religious impulse, and the missionary objective of carrying this impulse to others. The _semi-religious_ are built around religious and symbolic heroes, make a bid for the heroic and the gang spirit, and seek to inculcate more or less of religious truth by the sugar-coat method. The _welfare_ type aims at the giving of all sorts of activity in order to keep the boy interested and busy, and so raise the tone of his life in general.

The religious type of organization includes the forms that may be cla.s.sed under the church brotherhood idea--the junior brotherhoods of various sorts. They originated because of the need of some kind of expression for the religious impressions that were continually coming to the boy in his church life. The idea was good, but its release poor.

Senior forms of organization were imitated, adult forms of worship and service diminutized, and juvenile copies of mature experience encouraged. Junior brotherhoods and junior societies thus have tended to destroy the genuine, natural, spontaneous religious life of boys, and have unconsciously aided the culture of cant and religious unreality.

The semi-religious organizations have gone a full step beyond those of the religious type. Societies like the Knights of King Arthur, Knights of the Holy Grail, Modern Knights of St. Paul, and others of such ilk have in symbolism sought to teach and find expression for the religious impulse. The method has been more or less the religious type in disguise--ancient t.i.tles, elaborate ritual, initiations, and degrees, red fire, fuss and feathers, and something doing all the time to attract the boy. The result has been and is a play-idea of organization and a make-believe environment on the part of the boy. In his thought it never cla.s.sifies with his school or home or general church life. It is a thing apart, some thing or place to retire to, to forget the everyday thing for a moment of romance. The mature mind that is responsible for all of this, however, seeks to bend and use this make-believe world for the inculcation of religious truth; and the product is an astonishing variety of results. Most of it is beyond the grasp of the ordinary man, the only man who at present or at any time will do this work in the church; and where set programs or ritual are followed the work itself loses its fire and misses its effectiveness.

The welfare type of organizations has multiplied in the past few years, _and their less religious activities have served to keep the religious and semi-religious types alive_. The Boys' Brigade, the National First Aid a.s.sociation, the Woodcraft Indians, Sons of Daniel Boone, Boy Scouts, and others of like type, are in season and out of season appealing to American boyhood. Their aim is not specific, but general and vague: "Something to do, something to think about, something to enjoy, with a view always to character-building." Their appeal is mostly to the physical and the out-of-doors; their philosophy that of the recapitulation of the culture epochs. Their promoters do not claim that they touch all of life. They seek to dominate the leisure time only, and to produce goodness by affording no free time for positive wrong-doing. The domination is also physical expression, and the mental and spiritual in the boy and his home, school, and church life are not vitally affected directly.

All three types, however, have done splendid work in the past, and are rendering good service in the present as they will in the future. The success of each depends entirely on its leadership. If a leader be steeped in the Idylls of the King, the Knights of King Arthur will be popular with the boys and the church. If the superintendent of the brotherhood or society be human and magnetic, the church and the boy will sing its praises. If the scoutmaster is an out-of-door man and has a point of contact with the boy, the Boy Scouts will be the solution of all our difficulties. Here lies the crux of the whole matter. If boys are added to the church through any organization, it is not because of the method, but because of the worker of the method. The method counts because it is part of the worker--is in his blood.

=Method=

The aim of all church work should be the production not merely of manhood but _Christian manhood_. The vision is to see the boy a Christ-like boy--a physically, socially, mentally and spiritually balanced man in the making. The organizations used, then, in boys' work should be selected with this aim in mind.

Again, modern psychology has demonstrated to us that all boy activities must be graded according to each stage of a boy's development, and that there are several such stages. In the adolescent boy these may roughly be cla.s.sed as the heroic and reflective stages, or as early, middle, and late adolescence. Boy activities, then, must group themselves to minister to the needs of each separate stage in order to work effectively. But psychology has also shown us that the activities of any one stage must also be graded to meet the needs of that one stage. Thus the heroic may run from the twelfth to the fifteenth year, and the activities of this phase should be graded to meet the development of the phase. This is well ill.u.s.trated by the Tenderfoot Second Cla.s.s Scout and First Cla.s.s Scout degrees of the Boy Scouts which operate in this period.

The factors of the problem, then, to be considered in the method are: First, Christian Manhood; second, the fact that there are distinct and separate stages of growth in a boy's development, each stage having its own well-defined steps of growth; and third, the selection of existing boy organization activities to meet the need and produce the aim or desired result.

By way of ill.u.s.tration, let us consider a group of boys just past their twelfth year. All their physical, social, mental, and spiritual needs are to be met. The boys are just adolescent and their outlook because of that is altruistic. They have reached the "ganging" period, and so must have some form of organization. What organizations can be used to lead them into Christian manhood between the twelfth and fifteenth year?

There are the Knights of King Arthur, the Boy Scouts, the Junior Brotherhood, the Christian Endeavor, and the Sunday School Bible Cla.s.s.

There are others--hosts of them--but these widely known forms will suit the purpose. For physical purposes we have the Scouts, for social purposes the Scouts, Knights, and the Bible Cla.s.s; for mental purposes the Knights, and for spiritual purposes the Knights, Brotherhood, Endeavor, and the Bible Cla.s.s. To see a boy get his own full development under this plan he must needs belong to at least five organizations; and _the principle of a.s.sociation among boys is not gangs but the gang_.

However, much can be done under difficulties. The Scouts will afford free, physical, outdoor expression, without which there is no boy. The Knights will furnish mental ideals and objectives; for the Knights of King Arthur is the mental expression of the Boy Scouts and the Boy Scouts is the physical expression of the Knights of King Arthur. Both of them, with the Bible Cla.s.s group, will furnish social stimulus and the Bible study, and the more or less valuable devotional expression of the Endeavor and Brotherhood will take care of the spiritual. In using an organization, a clearly defined idea of the end sought should always be in view.

=Efficiency=

In all church work for boys, efficiency should be sought. _It should also be kept in mind that it is church work for boys_.

In all our discussion two things must seem striking: first, that we must at present use at least five organizations to meet the boy need, five gangs, when the principle of boy a.s.sociation is not gangs but the gang; and second, that all of these organizations, with the exception of the Bible Cla.s.s, have their headquarters outside of the local church itself.

The headquarters are in New York, Detroit, Boston, Cincinnati, Baltimore, etc., while the work they seek to do is the local church's business. Further, they have all had their birth in the misunderstanding of the church as to her mission for boys. The church, however, has now a new vision of her mission, as manifested by her patience and forbearance in trying out and listening to the voices of all these organizations that would help her from the outside. The church is awake to the need, but is confused in the method, because she recognizes that no single organization that knocks at her door is sufficient and complete enough for her task. She needs all their methods without their organization.

She cannot a.s.sume their organization, because it is not of her own flesh and blood.

_A boy's allegiance cannot be split up among gangs. He must be a member of the gang._ One organization is all that he can comprehend with loyalty at one time. _This organization must be also of the local church._ But the church needs no new organization. All she needs is activities suitable to the boy's growth. _She has an organization that the boy cannot outgrow--the Organized Bible Cla.s.s._ At fifteen he is through with the Scouts and the Knights, and at eighteen or twenty he is through with fraternities and orders, or ought to be; for, if a boy be not starved for these things when a boy, he will outgrow them as he outgrows a suit of clothes. Graduation from these orders very often means graduation from the Sunday school and church; for no single organization can be conceived, that with ritual and form can bind together the activities of twelve to fifteen, fifteen to twenty, and twenty to thirty. However, there can be no graduation from the Organized Bible Cla.s.s, flesh of the church's flesh, blood of her blood, muscle of her muscle; and the Organized Bible Cla.s.s is flexible enough for an adjustment to every stage of boy development, and to all its physical, social, mental and spiritual needs. The organized cla.s.s between twelve and fifteen can include all the interests of those years, and when the next stage of growth is on, can discard these for the interests that lie between fifteen and twenty, and so on to the end.

The Organized Bible Cla.s.s is simple in organization, is modern and elastic, affords the minimum of organization and the maximum of efficiency, is big enough to meet all the boy's needs, and is the church's own. Into it can be poured all the activities of all the organizations ever known, and it can be made the richest and best adapted organization to the boy life of the Church that has yet been conceived.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON METHOD AND ORGANIZATION

Alexander (Editor).--Boy Training (Chapter on Auxiliary Organizations) (.75).

--Sunday School and the Teens (Chapter on Organizations) ($1.00).

Foster.--The Boy and the Church (Chapter on Books and Notes) (.75).

VIII

THE ORGANIZED SUNDAY SCHOOL BIBLE CLa.s.s[2]