HAVE
WE
FORGOTTEN?
An afternoon Sunday school in action. Eager listeners are taught Bible lessons by dedicated instructors.
by Thelma Bain Kramer
W hen W alter S cott sat down, he knew he had dropped a bombshell in that quiet camp setting in Colorado. He had before him all the missionaries representing the American Sunday School Union in the Midwestern District. They were giving their lives on sacrificial sal aries to take the gospel to the for gotten places o f the central states. They reached children and adults who by choice or appointment lived in sparsely-populated communities. They had come, hoping to find help in their particular fields. They knew they would be encouraged by the messages of their leaders, by the times when they talked things over with each other and with God, and by the plans they worked out to gether. But they hadn’t expected their new Executive Vice-President to challenge them to take to their hearts the centers o f our great American cities. Theirs was a rural work. Under the direction of the Soci ety’ s Board of Managers, consisting of thirty-six Christian laymen, the executive staff were going to take a hard look at the inner city popu lations and determine whether the long-standing rural work should be accompanied by a sister called “Ur ban Ministry.” The newly-appointed is
vision, the personnel, or the finances to minister to its throbbing, beating heart. As Robert Raikes, the found er of the Sunday School, discovered in Gloucester, England, back in the 1790’s, working with men in the pri sons is often too late to help. Taxes cannot care adequately for what needs to be done. Even today’ s labor unions are not equipped to minister to the families o f its members. The problem is bigger than large families. It is greater than economic difficulties. It is more complicated than variations in mental ability, manual dexterity or technical skills. It is made more complex by the stress of emotional, psychological, physical, social and cultural differ ences and the great spiritual vac uum. Like shifting sands, it stacks in heaps blown mercilessly by the winds of adversity, desire, avarice, ambition, bitterness and sex. At its selfish core the hurricane uses re sentment, pride, revenge, disease, hopelessness and godlessness to leave a ruined wake. It makes skyscrapers o f the problems of isolated rural communities which sweep through the canyons below. So back in 1962 at Camp Id-Ra- Ha-Je (condensed from “ I’d Rather Have Jesus” ) in the mountains of Colorado, Walter Scott shared his THE KING'S BUSINESS
Executive Officer stressed any such undertaking as a “ Plus Effort” in order that all would understand the challenge as an addition to, not a replacement of, the well-rooted rural ministry. Walter Scott had been an adminis trator o f the City o f Philadelphia when God called him to assist in the executive leadership of the Ameri can Sunday School Union. He knew the city of Philadelphia as a place of opportunity for business, com merce and industry with a long his tory. He knew the men who were its leaders, its enemies, its workers and its protectors. He was concerned with the heart of the city whose virile life had moved from its cen tral district to the suburbs and had left the core of the city’s pulsating life. He joined forces with the Amer ican Sunday School Union because he believed that government—city, state or nation—could not cope ade quately with a city’s need. That need involves more than sanitation, a fire or a police battalion, a building and safety code, or even a poverty pro gram. Neither courts nor schools could give the attention, the love or the compassion that the hub o f a city needs. Few churches in the changing life of the inner city have either the
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