The Boy and the Sunday School: A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday School with Teen Age BoysAlexander, John L.
Religion
The Boy and the Sunday School: A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday School with Teen Age Boys
Alexander, John L.
Sunday schools
In all our discussion two things must seem striking: first, that we must
at present use at least five organizations to meet the boy need, five
gangs, when the principle of boy association is not gangs but the gang;
and second, that all of these organizations, with the exception of the
Bible Class, have their headquarters outside of the local church itself.
The headquarters are in New York, Detroit, Boston, Cincinnati,
Baltimore, etc., while the work they seek to do is the local church's
business. Further, they have all had their birth in the misunderstanding
of the church as to her mission for boys. The church, however, has now a
new vision of her mission, as manifested by her patience and forbearance
in trying out and listening to the voices of all these organizations
that would help her from the outside. The church is awake to the need,
but is confused in the method, because she recognizes that no single
organization that knocks at her door is sufficient and complete enough
for her task. She needs all their methods without their organization.
She cannot assume their organization, because it is not of her own flesh
and blood.
_A boy's allegiance cannot be split up among gangs. He must be a member
of the gang._ One organization is all that he can comprehend with
loyalty at one time. _This organization must be also of the local
church._ But the church needs no new organization. All she needs is
activities suitable to the boy's growth. _She has an organization that
the boy cannot outgrow--the Organized Bible Class._ At fifteen he is
through with the Scouts and the Knights, and at eighteen or twenty he is
through with fraternities and orders, or ought to be; for, if a boy be
not starved for these things when a boy, he will outgrow them as he
outgrows a suit of clothes. Graduation from these orders very often
means graduation from the Sunday school and church; for no single
organization can be conceived, that with ritual and form can bind
together the activities of twelve to fifteen, fifteen to twenty, and
twenty to thirty. However, there can be no graduation from the Organized
Bible Class, flesh of the church's flesh, blood of her blood, muscle of
her muscle; and the Organized Bible Class is flexible enough for an
adjustment to every stage of boy development, and to all its physical,
social, mental and spiritual needs. The organized class between twelve
and fifteen can include all the interests of those years, and when the
next stage of growth is on, can discard these for the interests that
lie between fifteen and twenty, and so on to the end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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