Sunday-School Success
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The wise choice of topics is quite as important as a wise choice of men to treat them. Let all programme-makers remember what the convention is to do: not to show off leaders, or to raise money, or to get acquainted, or to have a good time, but to learn more about teaching and managing Sunday-schools. Three aims must be set before every Sunday-school convention: to arouse new love for the Bible, to arouse new love for souls, to arouse new zeal for bringing these two together. Every convention, then, should divide its time among three classes of topics: the Bible, the children, the teaching.
1. The Bible. Such themes as these are suggested: "How the Bible differs from all other books." "Recent Bible discoveries." "My way of studying the Bible." "Bible-marking." "How to study Exodus." "The use of a 'teacher's Bible.'" "Interleaved Bibles,—why and how." "The value of the Victoria revision." "The study of the Bible as literature." "What is the best commentary?" "Reading the Bible in course,—how to make it most profitable." "The Septuagint and its importance." "How the Bible came down to the printing-press." "The story of our English Bible."
2. The Children. "Imagination in children." "Reasoning processes that a child will not appreciate." "Why children love stories." "Important differences between the child's mind and ours." "Put yourself in his place." "A child's confidence: how lost; how won." "Prigs: how not to make them." "The self-conscious child and how to treat him." "Lessons from the playground." "Kindergarten principles of value in the Sunday-school."
3. The Two Brought Together. "What is a good question?" "How to get the class to ask questions." "A class that keeps its own order." "Getting young people in love with the Bible." "The teacher's voice." "Their own Bibles." "The quarterly left at home." "How to make the Bible real to the children." "Some tests our teaching should stand."
This outline does not omit the school management, and occasional discussion of the work of superintendents and other officers will belong under the last head; but the teachers are so many compared with the officers that their work should be treated the more generously. I think most convention programmes deal far too much with the machinery of the work, any way.
The best mode of helping the officers is by an officers' conference; and if the convention holds but two sessions, I would urge that one of them be broken up into conferences. In one room the primary workers may meet; in another, the superintendents and their assistants; in others, the librarians, the secretaries, the choristers, the teachers of intermediate classes, the teachers of adult classes, the heads of home departments, the pastors. Programmes for these conferences should be arranged with as much care as for the main convention, and nothing should be done at random. It is a good plan, at the opening of these little simultaneous gatherings, to appoint one member of each to take notes of the best things and report them succinctly to the entire body when it reassembles.
There are three classes of topics that I especially delight to see on a convention programme. First, the fundamentals. We must not forget the host of new workers constantly coming into our ranks. "How to ask a question" is an old, old theme; but there are enough new teachers to keep it forever fresh and pertinent. Second, new methods, exploited by authorities, by practical workers. Third, what I call "encouragements," topics that inspire, cheer, comfort, victories gained, rewards in sight. Hallelujah themes.
To these I must add a fourth: work for the audience. I would give the listeners a chance to "talk back" about once every hour, and something to do, besides listening, every half-hour. Question-boxes on practical topics are incomparable interest-quickeners. An answer-box is a reversed question-box. It contains written answers by the teachers, two or three questions of wide scope and great importance being propounded on the programme; such questions as: "What do you do with pert children?" "How do you get your scholars to study their lessons?" A wise leader, with the grace of conciseness, is required for both these exercises.
Yes, and he is needed for the "open parliaments," or conversational discussions of helpful topics by brisk dialogue between audience and platform. These may be made merely parade-grounds for "smart" leaders, or genuine experience meetings, true council fires. It is wise to send a special invitation to your best teachers, asking them to be prepared with suggestions or questions for the open parliament, that it may start off with momentum already obtained. A summarist, too, is a good appointment; he listens quietly to the open parliament, and at the close gathers up, in a few sentences that stick, whatever is best worth preserving out of the discussion.
The open parliament most commonly held consists merely of dry and formal reports from each school, the roll being called. If such an exercise is held, place in charge of it a man thoroughly familiar with the schools, and able by brisk questioning to elicit a report that will picture the one school and stimulate the others.
A good presiding officer is half a convention. His first duty is to have a distinct understanding with each speaker that he is not to trespass on the next man's time, and his second duty is to cry "Stop, thief!" if the speakers do so trespass. The convention management should be a model for the Sunday-schools in every way, and in none more imperatively than in this of promptness.
But also as to order. Oh, the weak-kneed or the purblind presidents, that allow the talking, whispering, walking about of a few to filch from the many half the value of the meetings! Stop the speaker. Call a halt on the entire convention. Don't proceed another step till quiet is restored, and maintained. Be a platform czar, and your audience will be your happy serfs.
Then, the president is master of ceremonies. So much in acquaintanceships depends on tactful introductions! He should deliver to each successive speaker an audience that is in a glow of anticipation, and when the speaker is done,—yes, and all through,—his own cordial hands should lead the hearty applause, and he should take time for an appreciative word before passing to the next topic.
If the presiding officer is to do all this, he must plan beforehand almost every sentence he will use in introducing speakers or opening the discussions. He is to be suggestive; he is to set brains a-throbbing with eagerness and tongues aching with things to say; and he is to do it all in twenty words. Brevity, good humor, suggestiveness,—these, in this order, are the chairman's prime virtues.
At the opening of every convention the key-note of formality, routine, and perfunctoriness is struck in the address of welcome and the response. Their every word could safely be predicted in advance. The world is waiting for a programme committee that will be courageous enough to leave them out. If the pastor of the entertaining church has helpful ideas on Sunday-school work, by all means place him on the programme somewhere; but don't make a rut of him.
At the very outset strike the key of prayer. Insert here and there throughout the programme a quiet ten minutes with the great Teacher. By all means close with a devotional half-hour—not a hasty prayer punctuated with the snapping of watches. Sentence prayers by scores, prayer psalms softly repeated, prayer hymns read with bowed heads,—the convention should furnish an inspiration and model for the devotions of all the schools represented.
Scarcely less important is the element of song. Unconsciously to themselves, the audience should become a normal training-class, learning how to conduct the singing of their schools in fresh and uplifting ways. Many, if not all of the methods mentioned in my chapter on this theme find fit application to the convention.
The social features deserve careful attention. Set the teachers to talking together; conversation was Socrates' university. One of the most helpful events may be a light supper given by the entertaining church. A small fee is charged, all sit down together, and at the close a series of happy speeches will bring out flashes of wit and bushels of sense.
The business should be kept under. Introduce it a little at a time, rather than spend a fatiguing hour and a half. Make no parade of money-raising. Giving should be done quietly. Teach your teachers the grace of envelopes. Reduce all business to a minimum, remembering that the convention comes together not for legislation, but for inspiration.
The Sunday-school convention is not only a conference, but an exposition. Here should be gathered whatever new teaching apparatus any school has bought: wall-maps, sand-maps, relief-maps, material for object-lessons, portable blackboards, colored pictures illustrating the lessons, specimens of class tests, library catalogues, new kinds of class-books, collection-envelopes, singing-books, new editions of the Bible, lesson helps of all kinds,—it is clear how varied and valuable a collection may easily be brought together when once the teachers and officers understand what is wanted.
The library of the entertaining school should be open for visiting librarians to examine books and methods. The best new books might be brought in from all the libraries of the district, and if each school sent only one or two, the entire exhibit would furnish many a suggestion to wide-awake library committees.
One of the most important exhibits is a Sunday-school map of the district, indicating where schools are in existence, and also where schools might and should be placed.
There is one kind of exhibit that should rarely be made, if ever: an exhibit of the children themselves, either to "speak pieces" or to play Sunday-school and be taught. The latter use of them has advantages, but, to my mind, the gain to the audience is nothing compared to the children's increase of self-consciousness. I hide my head whenever I think of such a mock recitation in which I figured when a little boy, and remember how proud I was of my pert forwardness in answering all of the questions; before all those people, too!
In closing, let us ask how the convention results may be gathered up, preserved, and sown broadcast. A notebook should be in the hand of each attendant,—either given away or sold. The speakers should so mark their points and emphasize the subdivisions of their addresses that the thoughts can readily be grasped and retained. A printed syllabus is a great assistance to this end, and if the printing-press is too costly, a manifolder may be used. Blank pages should be left in the programme, to invite to note-taking.
And then, the new plans all jotted down, the felicitous expressions written out verbatim, the facts and figures clearly noted, let the convention be widely reported. Not merely should the convention press committee, that heralded the gathering through the papers, continue their labors long enough to render their previous work most fruitful, but every teacher present should carry the convention's best to his teachers' meeting and his class; yes, and to the church prayer-meeting. Thus will the ardor of the council fire spread throughout the army.
Chapter XLII
The Incorporation of Ideas
Certain arts, such as sculpture, painting, and architecture, have been named the fine arts by some man who had not learned to look inward, and see what an infinitely finer art is any that attempts to fashion the human soul. The pastor's and the teacher's arts, which are in essence one, though the tyranny of language forbids calling them the fine arts, may be given even a nobler title; they are the high arts.
We would sit down with bated breath and tense-drawn nerves to take to pieces for the first time the delicate machinery of a watch for cleaning and readjustment. If a sovereign diamond were placed in our hands for faceting, we would study for days its cleavage plane, its natural angles, and its matrix, and press it to the revolving wheel at last with timidity and shrinking. But when the most marvelously delicate, impressionable, yet abiding thing in the world is placed in our hands, together with the mightiest yet finest tools, and under conditions constantly varying, and we are told to fashion a human soul into truth and nobility, we sit down with confident smiles, and whack away.
It is impossible for a Sunday-school teacher to magnify his office. He needs a spiritual telescope, rather, to see above it and below it and on all sides of it. We Sunday-school teachers constitute an unordained ministry, whose functions are as sacred as those of the pulpit, though less inclusive. If we are faithful, conversions will be as frequent results of our lesson questions as of the pastor's sermons. "God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers." Let us desire earnestly the greater gifts; but if God calls us to be neither missionary nor pastor, but Sunday-school teacher, even that calling is too high for us fully to attain.
It is an anomaly to which the Christian world is just awaking that workers permit themselves to enter on this sacred art with no apprenticeship. Indeed, if such untrained workers were not admitted, there would soon be no Sunday-schools in the world to admit them. Long as the seminaries for ministerial preparation have existed, it is only recently that training-schools for lay workers have been formed. May they grow and multiply!
But until enlarged Christian activity places one of these blessed institutions within reach of each consecrated layman, we must do the best we can with other means of growth. We must organize regular Sunday-school conventions and teach one another there. We must build one another up in enthusiastic teachers' meetings. We must use the best lesson helps. We must read greedily every book and every article that promises to give us new ideas and methods and inspiration.
Now some object to all this. "You are needlessly discouraging us," they say. "You are making a very simple matter appear complicated; an easy one seem difficult. Christ's yoke is easy; Christ's gospel is plain; he will give us in that Sunday-school hour what we are to say. Your minute directions as to methods of study, as to concordance and commentary and maps, are flying in the face of Providence. The Spirit bloweth where he listeth."
The answer to all this is simple, and consists mainly in an appeal to experience. Simple and plain as Christ's message is, human lives are very complicated, and it is no simple matter or easy task to lay the Saviour's simple healing alongside their varied ills. Christ's burden is light; if it were heavier it would be easier to get paradoxical humanity to accept it. Christ will instruct us what to say, provided we have so trained our heart and brain that his words will not fall as senseless babble from our tongues. The Spirit does breathe where he listeth, but the experience of these centuries ought to teach us that God is never present in power where work and prayer have not invited him.
Haphazard work is not equal to thoughtful work. Minute directions that would be wasted on a barn-painter are a necessity of the artist. Impromptu never yet won a race with Preparation. And I know that many a teacher is mourning over his empty hands who might be rejoicing over great sheaves if his sowing had been more liberal and his teaching more painstaking.
And yet I sympathize with the weary discouragement of which all teachers feel a twinge when high ideals of teaching are held out before them. We are sure we are doing our best, already. It annoys us to be shown a better best. Our work is hard enough. It troubles us to be told that we must work harder before it can ever become easy. And especially, we are so confused by the multiplicity of good things we may do, of improvements we may make, that we do and make none of them.
Now the secret of success in all arts lies in this: the Incorporation of Ideas. The reception of ideas, the appreciation and praise of them, this is nothing, though many are satisfied to stop here; but the incorporation, the embodiment of them, this makes the artist. The artist is the man that is hungry for ideas,—for the ideal, that is; the man that, like Paul, proves them all by the tests of thought and experience, and then holds fast whatever is good, until it has become part of himself, until it is incorporated.
The artist is a man, too, that above all men knows the importance of trifles. The contour must be molded to nature precisely, the statue finished to the finger-nail, the machine accurate in every line and surface. He will not try to attain the ideal at a bound; it is made up, he knows, of many ideas. He grasps one idea, and fixes that forever. Then, he has power for another.
One point at a time, then, fellow-laborers in this blessed work; one idea from an eager throng appealing to you in books, lectures, or papers, proved and found good, and then held fast by prayerful practice, by never-yielding effort, until it is added to the company of your unconscious forces. And then, in this power, to add another to it! Thus alone can we win, from Christ's university, the highest of all degrees, Masters of his Art!
Chapter XLIII
From a Superintendent's Notebook
An egotist is foredoomed to failure in the Sunday-school. The worker that hopes for success must cast to the winds any foolish pride in originality, and seek far and wide for the wisest ideas and the freshest methods. A superintendent or a teacher without a notebook is only half a superintendent or teacher. Its pages should rapidly grow rich with plunder. The little white friend must be at hand when he attends conventions, when he reads, when he talks with other workers, when he thinks and prays over his sacred tasks.
The two chapters that follow are merely specimen pages of such notebooks. While I have utilized them to gather up various plans and experiences that could not fittingly find place elsewhere in the book, their chief purpose is to illustrate the wide-awake catholicity that must animate every successful worker in Sunday-schools.
It is right to say—though this is a matter of course—that a large majority of these paragraphs are condensed from that great storehouse of Sunday-school lore, the "Sunday-school Times."
Their Own Review.—Scholars are likely to answer with special zest the questions prepared by other scholars. One school asks its classes in turn to furnish three questions on each lesson, which are proposed to the entire school at the close of the lesson hour. From these questions are selected a number for the quarterly review. They are "manifolded," and written answers are expected from all present.
Out of Order.—An excellent review scheme was arranged by a superintendent who gave his school a list of twenty-six events in the life of Christ, all jumbled up, and asked them to come next Sunday prepared to arrange them in chronological order.
A School Review.—For reviewing the lesson before the entire school, select one class a week beforehand and give it ten or twelve comprehensive questions, from the quarterly or original. At the close of the lesson ask this class to rise and answer the questions as another class, also rising, asks them. Let all the classes take turns in this service.
School Reviews.—For a change, it is well to incorporate the entire school in a general review,—omitting, of course, the younger classes. One person may conduct the review, or the questions on each lesson may be asked by a different teacher. Different classes may be assigned special lessons to illustrate by the concert repetition of Bible verses, or by a stanza of some song. One lesson of the quarter may be assigned to each class, and the questions that will be asked may be given to that class a week or two beforehand. In this case, general questions for the entire school should occasionally be interspersed.
A Teachers' Supper.—Once a year, at least, bring together all the teachers and officers around a well-filled table. After-dinner speeches, cheery and merry, may follow, and then a pleasant evening's entertainment.
The Annual Meeting.—Make this an event. A supper with bright speeches, the business meeting to follow; a brisk literary and musical entertainment; an introductory talk by some practical worker from abroad,—these are some of the ways of distinguishing the occasion.
Badges.—Any Sunday-school festival will be given eclat by the use of badges. The children will be proud to wear them, and will treasure them as souvenirs. They may be made almost without cost if you will use bright-colored cambric, and print upon them with a hand-stamp.
A Sunday-School Day.—If not once a year, at least once every few years, it is well worth while to make the Sunday-school the theme of all the exercises on the Lord's day,—both morning and evening services, and the Christian Endeavor meeting. The subject has so many practical aspects that much good will be done in addition to the quickening of the Sunday-school.
The Home Department.—Simply a promise to study the lesson at home for half an hour each week—that is the scheme of the home department. You may add visitors, records, reports, ad libitum, but the home department may be complete and satisfactory without these. The plan is so simple that any school can use it, and so fruitful of blessed results that no school dare neglect it. A thorough canvass for members of the home department seldom fails to bring new members into the main school at once, and as the home study arouses interest, new scholars are continually added from this source, besides the scores of aged and shut-ins whose lives are thus led into the green pastures of the Word.
Home Department Day.—On this occasion a special effort is made to bring to the Sunday-school the entire home department. They sit together, and special services are held in their honor and for their benefit.
Parents' Day.—Make a special effort once a year to bring out all the parents of the scholars. Issue special printed invitations. Have a printed programme. Let the exercises be the regular working of the school, with merely one short address to the parents in addition.
A Parents' Social.—Parents and teacher should know one another, and there is no more gracious way to bring this about than by an evening spent together at the teacher's house.
Purpose Cards.—To stimulate the school in needed ways, have a "purpose card" printed. It will read, in tabular form, "I will endeavor to attend more faithfully, to prepare my lesson better, to get a new scholar," etc. Each member of the school signs his card, marks with crosses the "purposes" he makes his own, and returns the card to the superintendent.
Installing the New Officers.—This should be done with some ceremony, including a very short address by the pastor, another by the outgoing superintendent or prominent officer, another by a representative of the incoming group, and an earnest prayer,—all to occupy no more than ten minutes. The scholars will have more respect for leaders thus honored, and the officers themselves will be more likely to magnify their office.
The Old Superintendent.—Some schools elevate the assistant superintendent regularly to the superintendency. Other schools adopt the opposite course, and make the superintendent of one year the assistant superintendent of the next. Either plan secures continuity of method.
A True Assistant.—The assistant superintendent should be prepared to do, in the superintendent's absence, everything the superintendent ordinarily does. How can he be prepared to do this unless the superintendent regularly shares all kinds of work with his assistant?
Help from the Public School.—In most communities a very inspiring series of lectures might be obtained from Christian teachers in the secular schools and colleges, the purpose of each lecture being to show how, according to the best pedagogical methods, a certain lesson might be taught, or Sunday-school teaching in general be carried on.
Flowers at Home.—You will delight your school, and teach them many lessons, if you give each scholar—or get the teachers to do this—a bulb, a package of seeds, or a small potted plant like a rose. Hold an exhibition to show the results, and then have the flowers given to the sick, the hospitals, the poor, or sold for missions.