/by Howard Hendricks
‘Wiggle.’ What did he do? He wig gled. You see, the psychologist didn’t make him that way, the Lord did; and to the extent you cooper ate with the Lord in teaching him the way He made him, you get re sults.” Another teacher in the same church had a problem with her jun iors. She was all worried about the problem of socialization— her boys just wouldn’t get along with her girls. I said, “Don’t worry about that; just wait a year or so and God will take care of it for you.” The junior boy says, “ Girls! Who wants girls at the party?” But wait just a year and you will hear the junior high say, “ Girls! Aren’t they going to have girls at this thing? What kind of a party is it any way?” The Lord brings that change about. You don’t have to worry about it but it’s mighty important that you understand it. You not only need to know the general age characteristics of your children but you also need to know the individual pupils in your class. How well do you know Sammy? You may know his name, but how much do you know about him as an individual? The better you know him, the better able you will be to meet his needs. In the church where I have been working for some time as a Chris tian education consultant, we lost four junior high boys’ teachers dur ing a period of about eight months. This was getting to be quite serious. We had to have a teacher. Finally, a certain young man was suggested and I’m perfectly frank when I tell you, I didn’t think he had it. I
looked at him and I thought, “ This is the last person in all the world who will ever teach a class of jun ior high boys.” But in all the time I have been in this work, I’ve never yet seen a man who has done what tha t y o u n g m an d id in seven months. It was nothing short of a miracle! One night I spoke to this young man, “ You know, I thank ¡the Lord on every remembrance of you. It’s wonderful the way the Lord has used you in this class. I’d like to know about your secret of success.” Being a very humble fellow, he blushed all over, flustered a little and said, “Well, I don’t really have success, but you know, I hit on something that really works.” Then he reached into his side pocket, pulled out a little black notebook and opened it. At the top of each pagfe was the name of some boy in his class. He had a little snapshot and underneath it everything he could find out about him. If the boy came from a non-Christian home, that went in there. Maybe his mother and father were hostile to his coming to Sunday school; he put that down. Whatever he could find out about his hobbies, his in terests, his problems, that went in too. It was actually a spiritual case history of every boy in that class. Sammy would say to him, “ Man, I’m having a terrible time with this arithmetic!” That went into the little notebook. Next week when Sammy walked in the door, the first thing the teacher would say was, “ Say, Sammy, how are you coming on the arithmetic?” If Sam my was interested in fishing, he put
that down. The next time he got an opportunity to go fishing, he’d look that boy up and take him along with him. But the thing that really made this notebook work was that every day this teacher got down on his knees and pored over those pages in prayer. By the next Sunday he could hardly wait to get to the Sun day school class to teach those boys. I challenge you to pore over the lives of your pupils in prayer and then come on Sunday morning and bore them with the Word of God. A number of years ago I was teaching a class of junior high boys. Everything was going along well until a new boy arrived. I thought I had read everything about junior high boys and knew all of the an swers until this boy came along. Now everything I tried was a total flop. I couldn’t get him interested in a thing. I couldn’t keep him quiet dining the hour. Finally in desperation I decided to go and visit his parents. One Saturday afternoon I got into my little jalopy and went out to find his address. I had the hard est time trying to find it. No house number was to be found. Finally I discovered what was nothing more than a little shack. There was no place to knock so I just called into the opening. A woman came to the door and ushered me in. As I walked into this very poorly lighted room, I saw a prostrate form over against the wall. Later I dis covered that this was the boy’ s fa ther. He had been drunk for three and a half months. Because he had lost his job, his wife had to work CONTINUED
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The King's Business/October 1957
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