Organizing and Building Up the Sunday School: Modern Sunday School Manuals — John Shaqi
Organizing and Building Up the Sunday School: Modern Sunday School ManualsHurlbut, Jesse Lyman
Religion
Organizing and Building Up the Sunday School: Modern Sunday School Manuals
Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman
Sunday schools
One successful superintendent gave as a secret of his power to make his
school, both teachers and scholars, willing to do whatever he asked, "I
never expect my teachers or scholars to do anything that I am not ready
to do myself. Before I ask them to bring their Bibles I bring mine. When
I asked my school to be ready on the following Sunday to repeat in
concert the Nineteenth Psalm, I committed it to memory during the week,
and when the time came spoke the words with the school." Only that
superintendent who himself loves the Bible, and studies it, can have a
true Bible school.
(5) _An Able Executive._ The Sunday school is like that vision seen by
the prophet Ezekiel, a system of wheels within wheels, all endowed with
life; and the master of the mechanism directing its motion is the
superintendent. Moreover, each of these living wheels in the
Sunday-school machine is a volunteer worker, who may at any moment drop
out of his orbit. To hold together these varied elements, to combine
their movements, to guide each in his own sphere, to compass the common
purpose through all the forces working as one, requires a wise brain and
a skillful hand. The superintendent should have a plan for the school,
with details throughout for every emergency; he should be ready to
assign to every worker the task for which he is best fitted; he should
be able to work with others, not merely to command others; and he should
be a leader whom others will follow, not by the might of an
overmastering will, but by the magnetism of an attractive personality.
He should never forget that with others as well as with himself service
in the Sunday school is not compulsory but voluntary, that his
associates lay on the altar their free-hearted, unpaid labor; and that
such workers cannot be commanded, although by tact and wise generalship
they may be led to accomplish the most difficult tasks.
(6) _Sympathy with Youth._ The superintendent's office will bring him
into relations with youth during all its stages, from early childhood
through the entire adolescent period. He must be able to see life and
the world through the eyes of a little child, of a growing boy, and of a
young man. The sympathy which he needs is not a compassionate feeling
_for_ youth, but a feeling _with_ youth, an ability to put himself in
its place; to feel as young people feel, and to understand why they act
as they sometimes do. This sympathy will impart a love for young people,
such a love as will enable him to be patient with their foibles and
faults, to exert a powerful influence over them, and to keep before them
noble ideals of character and service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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