Part 1 (1/2)

The Boy and the Sunday School.

by John L. Alexander.

INTRODUCTION

The Sunday school chapter of Church history is now being written. It comes late in the volume, but those who are writing it and those who are reading it realize--as never before--that the Sunday school is rapidly coming to its rightful place. In the Sunday school, as elsewhere, it is the little child who has led the way to improvement. The commanding appeal of the little ones opened the door of advance, and, as a result, the Elementary Division of the school has outstripped the rest in its efficiency.

Where children go adults will follow, and so we discover that the Adult Division was the next to receive attention, until today its manly strength and power are the admiration of the Church.

Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the middle division, called the Secondary, and covering the ”Teen Age,” has been sadly neglected--the joint in the harness of our Sunday school fabric.

Here we have met with many a signal defeat, for the doors of our Sunday schools have seemed to swing outward and the boys and girls have gone from us, many of them never to return. We have busied ourselves to such an extent in studying the problem of the boy and the girl that the real problem--the problem of leaders.h.i.+p--has been overlooked.

The Secondary Division is the challenge of the Sunday school and of the Church today. It is during the ”Teen Age” that more decisions are made _for_ Christ and _against_ him than in any other period of life. It is here that Sunday school workers have found their greatest difficulty in meeting the issue, largely because they have not understood the material with which they have to deal.

We are rejoiced, however, to know that the Secondary Division is now coming to be better understood and recognized as the firing line of the Sunday school.

What has been needed and is now being supplied is authoritative literature concerning this critical period. Indeed, the Sunday school literature for the Secondary Division is probably appearing more rapidly now than that for any other division of the school.

This book is a choice contribution to that literature. It comes from a man who has devoted his life to the boys and girls, and who is probably the highest authority in our country in this Department. The largest contribution he is making to the advancement of the whole Sunday school work is in showing the fascination, as well as the possibilities, of the Secondary Division. We are sure this little book will bring rich returns to the Sunday schools, because of the large number who will be influenced, through reading its pages, to devote their lives to the bright boys and fair girls in whom is the hope, not only of the Church, but of the World.

=Marion Lawrance.=

Chicago, June 1, 1913.

FOREWORD

A great deal of material has come from the pens of various writers on boy life in the last few years. Quite a little, also, has been written about the Sunday school, and a few attempts have been made to hitch the boy of the teen years and the Sunday school together. Most of these attempts, however, have been far from successful; due, in part, to lack of knowledge of the boy on the one hand, or of the Sunday school on the other. Generous criticism of the Sunday school has been made by experts on boy life, but this generally has been nullified by the fact that the critics have had no adequate touch with the Sunday school or its problems--their bread-and-b.u.t.ter experience lay in another field.

”The Men and Religion Forward Movement,” in its continent-wide work, discovered not a few of the problems of the Sunday school, and attempted a partial solution in the volume on boys' work in the ”Messages” of the Movement. It was but partial, however, first, because the volume tried to deal with the boy, the church and the community all together, and second, because it failed to take into account the fact that there are two s.e.xes in the church school and that the boy, however important, const.i.tutes but a section of the Sunday school and its problems.

In view of this, it may not be amiss to set forth in a new volume a more or less thorough study of the Sunday school and the adolescent or teen age boy, the one in relations.h.i.+p to the other, and at the same time to set forth as clearly as possible the present plans, methods and att.i.tude of the Sunday school, denominationally and interdenominationally.

In the preparation of this little book I have utilized considerable material written by me for other purposes. Generous use has also been made of the Secondary Division Leaflets of the International Sunday School a.s.sociation. A deep debt of grat.i.tude is mine to the members of the International Secondary Committee: Messrs. E.H. Nichols, Frank L.

Brown, Eugene C. Foster, William C. Johnston, William H. Danforth, S.F.

Shattuck, R.A. Waite, Mrs. M.S. Lamoreaux, and the Misses Minnie E.

Kennedy, Anna Branch Binford and Helen Gill Lovett, for their great help and counsel in preparing the above leaflets. Grateful acknowledgment is also made to Miss Margaret Slattery, Mrs. J.W. Barnes, Rev. Charles D.

Bulla, D.D., Rev. William E. Chalmers, B.D., Rev. C.H. Hubbell, D.D., Rev. A.L. Phillips, D.D., Rev. J.C. Robertson, B.D., and the Rev. R.P.

Shepherd, Ph.D., for their advice and suggestions as members of the Committee on Young People's Work of the Sunday School Council of Evangelical Denominations. The plans and methods of these leaflets have the approval of the denominational and interdenominational leaders of North America. I wish, also, to make public mention of the great a.s.sistance that Mr. Preston G. Orwig and my colleague, Rev. William A.

Brown, have rendered me in the practical working out of many of the methods contained in this volume. Two articles written for the ”Boys'

Work” volume of the Men and Religion Messages, and one for ”Making Religion Efficient” have been modified somewhat for this present work.

The aim has been to set forth as completely as possible the relations.h.i.+p of the Sunday school and the boy of the teen years in the light of the genius of the Sunday school.

No attempt has been made in this volume to discuss the boy psychologically or otherwise. This has been done so often that the subject has become matter-of-fact. My little volume on ”Boy Training,”