The Boy and the Sunday School | Page 7

problem of the church in touching these adolescent years is to
make the right use of all the facts of boy life. Too long has the church
looked upon the boy as a mere field of operation. Too long has she
considered the boy as a dual personality and regarded life as both
secular and spiritual. Today she is beginning to understand that all
boyhood life is spiritual; that there are no secular activities in boyhood,
but that every activity that a boy enters into has tremendous spiritual
value, either for good or for bad. It is especially true in a boy's life that
the spiritual finds expression through the physical. It should be true of
all life, but a boy especially lives by physical expression.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE CHURCH
Foster.--The Boy and the Church (.75).

Gray.--Non-Church Going, Its Reasons, and Remedies ($1.00).
Hodges.--Training of Children in Religion ($1.50).
Hulbert.--The Church and Her Children ($1.00).

IV
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL OR CHURCH SCHOOL
The Sunday school is the biggest force of the church in the life of the
boy. At times he refuses to attend the stated worship of the church, but
if the Sunday school be in the least interesting he will gladly attend it.
Its exercises and procedure must, however, be interesting, and rightly
so. The boy has the right to demand that the time, his own time, which
he gives to the Sunday school, should be utilized to some decently
profitable, pleasurable end. Education, even religious education, is not
necessarily a painful process. Discipline of mind or body has ceased to
be a series of disagreeable, rigid postures or exercises. Medicine has no
virtue merely because it is bad to the taste, and modern medical usage
prescribes free air and warm sunshine in large doses in place of the
old-time bitter nostrums. Even where the boy spirit needs medication,
the means employed need not be sepulchral gloom, solemn warning,
other-world songs, and penitential prayers, with great moral
applications of the non-understandable. The germs of spiritual disease
give way before the sunshine of the spirit, just as fast, if not faster, than
the microbes before the sun. The Sunday school, then, should be a
happy, joyous, sunny place, brimful of ideas, suggestion and impulse;
for these three are at once the giants and fairies of religious education,
and are the essential elements of character-making.
To produce all of the above, three things are needed: adequate
organization, careful supervision, and common-sense leading. The first
is imperative, because all education is a matter of organization. The
second is part of the first, as supervision is the genius of organization.
The third is fundamental, for all expression--true education--depends
on the teacher or leader, whose innate idea of the fitness of things keeps
him from doing, on the one hand, that which is just customary, or, on
the other hand, that which may appear to be just scientific. The science
of yesterday should be the tradition of today; that is, if we are making
progress in educational processes. Today's science also should be
fighting yesterday's for supremacy. Common sense lies somewhere

between the two.
The only two of these three Sunday school essentials that this chapter
deals with are organization and supervision.
The Sunday school should be a kind of a religious regiment, martial
both in its music and its virtues for its challenge to the adolescent boy.
Now, every regiment, in peace or war, is properly organized with
battalions, companies, and squads. Everything is accounted for,
arranged for, and some one definitely held responsible for certain
things--not everything. The organization covers every member of the
regiment; so should the Sunday school.
In Sunday school nomenclature the regimental battalions are
"Divisions"--Elementary, Secondary, and Adult, by name. The
companies likewise are named "Departments," each division having its
own as in the "Elementary"--"Cradle Roll," "Beginners," "Primary,"
and "Junior." The squads in each case are the "Classes" that make up
the Departments. _It is essential that the Secondary, or Teen Age
Division, which enrolls the adolescent boy, be adequately organized._
Regiments, Battalions, Companies, and Squads must be properly
officered--must be supervised. Colonels, Majors, Captains, Lieutenants,
Sergeants and Corporals are the arteries of an army. In Sunday school
language, the head of the regiment is the General Superintendent, and
all the heads of divisions and departments are likewise named
Superintendent. The leader of the squad is the Teacher. Then a properly
supervised Sunday school is organized not unlike an army, and would
be, according to a diagram, like the following:
General Superintendent |
------+-----------------+----------+------+-----------------+--- | | | |
Elementary Secondary Adult Special Superintendent Superintendent
Superintendent Superintendent
Cradle Roll Intermediate Organized Bible Superintendent
Superintendent Class Superintendent
Beginners' Senior Home Superintendent Superintendent Superintendent
or Primary Teen Age Superintendent Superintendent or Junior Boys'
Superintendent Superintendent and Girls' Superintendent
Thus the modern