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
(4) _A Willing Worker._ The teacher's love for Christ, for his scholars,
and for his Bible is not to expend itself in emotion or even in study;
it is to find expression in efficient service. A task is laid upon him
which will demand much of his time and his power of body, mind, and
spirit. He must be ready to meet his class fifty-two Sundays in the
year: on days of sunshine and days of storm; when he is eager for the
work, and when he is weary in it; when his scholars are responsive, and
when they are careless; when his fellow workers are congenial, and when
they are anti-pathetic; when his lesson is easy to teach, and when it is
hard. He must be regular in his service, not turned aside by
opportunities of enjoyment elsewhere; and he must give to it all his
powers and all his skill. Work such as this can be sustained only by an
enduring enthusiasm, a devotion to the cause; and therefore the teacher
must have his heart enlisted as well as his will.
As a Sunday-school teacher, then, four harmonious objects will claim a
share in his love: his Lord, his scholars, his Bible, and his work.
2. =His Need of Training.= For two generations it was supposed that any
person fairly intelligent, without special equipment, was fitted to be a
Sunday-school teacher. There are found no records of training classes in
Sunday-school work earlier than 1855, when the Rev. John H. Vincent
began to gather young people and train them for service in his Sunday
school at Irvington, New Jersey. The seed of his "Palestine Class" grew
into the "Normal Class"; and by 1869 there were in a few places classes
for the teaching of teachers in the Bible and Sunday-school work. It is
not remarkable that Sunday-school teacher-training should be delayed so
long after the organization of the first Sunday school, when it is
remembered that in America the first Normal School for secular teachers
was not founded until 1839. The Chautauqua movement, begun in 1874, gave
a strong impetus to Sunday-school teacher-training; the state
associations and denominational organizations took up the work; and now
teacher-training classes are to be found in every state and province on
the American continent. The thoroughly graded school includes in its
system a class for the training of young people who are to be teachers.
It is late in the day to inquire why the Sunday-school teacher needs
training; but the question is often asked, and the answers are ready:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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