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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
August, 1933
is unquestioned are approved as teachers, and only such textbooks are recommended as are in full accord with the teaching o f the Bible. The names o f the evangelical schools associated with this organization are a sufficient guarantee that there will be strict adherence to the funda mentals of Christian teaching. N ot G rief A lone , but A ction N eeded Mary Virginia Lee, in Building the Intermediate De partment, tells of a Sunday-school worker arriving one Sunday morning in a beautiful and prosperous southern town. As no one met her at the station, she took a taxi, and driving past the square, noticed automobiles double parked all around the court house. This seemed so strange at such an early hour on the Lord’s Day, that she asked the driver what it all meant. He replied, “ The men o f the town have gathered here to go out in search o f a little boy who has been lost since Friday noon. Organized parties have been searching continually night and day ever since. Many have not even slept, but have been constantly seeking the lost child.” When they arrived at the home where the worker was to be entertained, she found that her hostess, who was the little lad’s Sunday-school teacher, had spent the night with the grief-stricken mother, and her husband had just returned from a fruitless all-night search. The sympathy of the entire town was aroused. Although many were praying, the anxiety grew more tense with every pass ing hour, and hope was giving way to dread. Throughout the morning services there was a spirit o f expectancy but still no news. About noon as the people were returning home from church, some one shouted, “ The boy is found !” Immediately loved ones, friends, and neighbors hastened to join the happy parents. There was great rejoicing every where because the lost boy had been found. A thousand times more awful is the fact that many, many of our American boys and girls are lost, separated from God, and condemned to eternal punishment. They are as surely lost as the heathen in a foreign land, who never heard o f God. It might have been possible for the little lad to have wandered back home, but not so with a lost soul. Sin is constantly leading it away from God. Poor, lost, sin-sick humanity cannot wander back to God, so Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. If our boys and girls are ever brought to the Saviour, some one must seek them. There is a general impression among fundamentalists that the supreme work o f the church is evangelism, the win ning of lost men and women to God. But there is something more important than evangelism; the supreme business of the church is the provision and preparation o f evangelists. And the supreme evangelistic field o f the church is the Sunday-school. There needs to be a teacher training class in every church, if for no other reason than that every Sun day-school teacher may be an evangelist. It is the great opportunity and responsibility o f every teacher to win his or her scholars to Jesus Christ and build them up in Chris tian living. For such a teacher God has provided the highest recognition and the greatest reward which the mind can conceive: “ They that be wise [teachers] shall shine with the brightness o f the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”
her Textbook, and therefore requires seven times as many hours for the study o f the Bible as the standards o f the International Council o f Religious Education. The Asso ciation also believes that the most productive field for evan gelism is the Sunday-school, and the most important evan gelist the Sunday-school teacher, and therefore lays great stress upon the training o f the teacher as a soul winner. It recognizes, too, that a sufficient knowledge of missions must be imparted to Sunday-school teachers if they are to interest and enthuse their pupils in the missionary enter prise o f the church. The tragic failure to emphasize evan gelism and missions in modern training courses is undoubt edly responsible for the diminishing gifts to missionary effort, as well as the decrease in additions to church membership. In the second place, the Association has set a new peda gogical standard. Those who are close to the work of teacher training have long recognized that it is impossible to maintain the same pedagogical efficiency in classes con ducted by local churches or by correspondence as when this instruction is secured in academic halls. Students in the local church are largely governed by the low standards o f the Sunday-school, and do not readily respond to the more exacting demands for study and recitation that the best standards in teacher training require. On the other hand, the studious atmosphere of academic institutions makes it possible to secure the same attention to studies in teacher training as in collegiate subjects. Walter Scott Athearn, in his recent book, The Minister and the Teacher, says: Teacher training programs now promoted by depart ments of church schools of various denominations are well intended, but they are largely futile. The training of church school teachers cannot be achieved by promotional agencies. It is an educational task which can only be solved by academic agencies. It is on the basis o f such strong testimony as this that the Association feels it would be unwise to offer its Stan dard Training Course outside the various schools that compose it. By restricting the work o f the classroom, the church may be assured that those who possess the diplomas o f the Association will have received a much more thorough and efficient training than anything that has ever been at tempted heretofore. In the third place, the Association has set a new e ffi ciency standard. It insists upon continuous and consecutive work, which has not only greater value for efficiency, but enables the student to complete a much longer course in a shorter time. Some o f the institutions have already ar ranged for the Standard Training Course of 432 hours to be completed in one year in their day school or two years in their evening school. Think how quickly a Sunday-school can be transformed into an efficient institution when its teachers can secure such unparalleled and complete train ing within one year! In the fourth place, the Association has established a new economical standard. The fact that the cooperating Bible institutes for the most part do not charge tuition makes it possible to offer this course at a minimum of ex pense. The Bible is used exclusively as a text in Bible instead o f a long list o f books written about the Bible. For this reason, the expense for textbooks is comparatively small. Officers o f the Association give their time for the promotion of the work gratuitously, and as the expense of administration is thus reduced to a minimum, the organiza tion is maintained without contributions from cooperating schools or enrollment fees from the students. In the fifth place, the Association has established a new evangelical standard. Only instructors whose orthodoxy
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