IS HOPE M OPE MUSS Stilliti SCIIOLS by 'Wayne Christianson m . Editor, Moody Monthly
I m a g i n e yourself this fall a stranger in a strange town with school about to begin. Comes the first week of September and you leave your youngsters at the neat, brick school two blocks away and drive away with no misgivings. But your peace of mind soon fades when you learn that the new school is not quite all you thought. You express your fears to a neighbor. “Oh, folks here don’t take school too seriously,” he tells you. “ Sure, kids have to go to school,” he adds, “but who worries about home work and grades? They’ll learn enough. And kids here always get promoted!” This word of comfort keeps you awake all night. By morning you’ve made up your mind. You’re going to visit school. There, unfortunately, you find that what your neigh bor said is true. No one but you seems worried about how much your youngsters learn. Yes, there are textbooks— for classroom use. Aside from these, the teachers’ aims seem vague indeed. No one seems to know whether Jerry is up to par in reading or whether Janet should bear down on her multiplication tables. Exams? Report cards? No one bothers about them in this school. Could a situation like this really exist? Probably not in our land of supervised public education. But something very much like it is actually taking place year after year in the majority of our Sunday Schools. Take a careful look at what goes on in your own Sunday School next Sunday and unless it is one of the relatively few exceptions you will be forced to one con clusion. The Sunday School is doing a wonderful work — but doing it in an utterly aimless way. There is no question but that the Sunday School is moulding lives, largely because it has enlisted faithful, praying Christians in the task of gathering individuals of all ages and exposing them to the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Some are being saved, many are being guided, and all are being encouraged to live the Christian life. All this is fine, but it should not blind us to the fact that in doing this wonderful work the average Sunday School is content to jog along with a lack of purpose and vigor which we would not tolerate for a moment in our public schools. Most churches frankly look to their Sunday Schools to shoulder the load of teaching among their member ships. But the average Sunday School is uncertain about what is an adequate curriculum, is largely indifferent as to whether or not the individual “pupil” learns or stag nates, and promotes its members'regardless of whether or not any real learning has been accomplished. These facts are so well known that it is hardly nec essary to document them. By and large, the problem of providing a curriculum which will give the Sunday School pupil step-by-step teaching in the Bible has been surrendered to the publishers of lesson quarterlies. This in some respects is a step forward since the quarterly makers are giving careful attention to this problem. Usually it means, however, that a change in publisher involves a change of curriculum affecting every person in the Sunday School.
It is a small wonder that the typical “pupil” does not take the Sunday School’s teaching efforts very seriously. He does not expect to master what he is covering or build on his knowledge from month to month — and he is seldom disappointed. He may receive a devotional thought now and then along the way and even some spiritual applications. These are valuable, but they should not hide the fact that the Sunday School is in need of a more clear-cut curriculum, that it needs to face the task of teaching the Word of God as a whole and that it should challenge individual interest and effort in a way that it does not now do. In view of this situation it shohld be no surprise that those trained in Sunday Schools are not well taught. For example, there was the survey taken a few years ago among 281 incoming college students, two-thirds of whom said they had regularly attended Sunday School. Of this group 79 per cent did not know the name of the tax collector who became a disciple, 74 per cent could not even name the father of Joseph and his brethren, and 70 per cent did not know in which book of the Bible to look for the Ten Commandments. Hard as it is to believe, 65 per cent failed to identify “the famous wise man of the Old Testament!” Some may argue that the Sunday School cannot expect to carry out a purposeful teaching program. One hour or even an hour and a half is too short a time. The handicap of using volunteer workers is too great. And the necessity for depending on interest to prompt voluntary attendance and lesson preparation all put the Sunday School at too great a disadvantage. These are very real difficulties, certainly, but no one of them is insurmountable. This is being proved by Sun day Schools which are operating successfully with respect to these problems. At least three basic needs must be met if our Sunday Schools are to become the more effective instruments they should be. First, there is the need for trained leadership. In addition to all-important spiritual qualifications, these leaders will need to know how to put others to work. They will need to know how to assign duties, how to help those under them to become more effective, how to arouse enthusiasm, and how constantly to keep checking up on results. Such leaders will recognize the necessity of a training program, not only for teachers but for other Sunday School workers. They will be keenly aware of the value of morale. The second need is for vision. In every Sunday School some one or two persons at least must have a concept of what his Sunday School can be. Remember, the great majority of us who are trying to do Sunday School work have never had the advantage of seeing how an effective, purposeful Sunday School works. The third need which must be met — and in some respects this is the most important s— is the need for definite goals and standards. As evangelicals we should know what it takes to make a Sunday School program truly effective. To that end we believe it would be val uable to set up standards of accreditation for Sunday
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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