The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' WorkHoben, Allan
Religion
The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work
Hoben, Allan
Boys; Church work with children
The proper care and beautifying of the streets and public places in his
own community, the collection of literature for prisoners or the inmates
of asylums or hospitals near at hand, supplying play equipment,
clothing, or any useful thing for unfortunate boys in congested city
districts, helping the minister and church in the distribution of
printed matter and alms, aiding smaller boys in the organization of
their games, helping some indigent widow, giving an entertainment,
selling tickets, souvenirs, or any merchantable article which they may
properly handle for the purpose of devoting the profits to some
immediate charity; making for sale articles in wood, metal, or leather
for the same purpose; winning other boys from bad associations to the
better influences of their own group, helping in the conduct of public
worship by song or otherwise, acting as messengers and minute-men for
the pastor--something of this sort should engage part of their time and
attention in order that they may be drawn into harmony with the spirit
of the church.
[Illustration: A CASE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SALVATION]
Ordinarily the general administration of the church could be made more
effective and the standard activities more attractive if the preacher
would keep the boy in mind in constructing and illustrating his sermons
and would make appeal to the known interests of boyhood; and if music
committees would adopt a policy for the development and use of his
musical ability instead of stifling and ignoring this valuable religious
asset and rendering the boy, so far forth, useless to and estranged from
the purposes and activities of the church. In church music the paid
quartette alone means the way of least resistance and of least benefit,
and it is a harmful device if it means the failure of the church to
enlist boys in the rare religious development to be achieved in sacred
song and in participation in public worship. It is to be regretted that
hymns suited to boyhood experience are very rare and that so little
effort is made to interest and use the boy in the stated worship of the
church.
But if these evils were remedied there would still be the problem of the
Sunday school which, although generally a worthy institution, usually
succeeds at the cost of the church-going habit which might otherwise be
cultivated in the boy. To make a Sunday-school boy instead of a church
boy is a net loss, and with the present Sunday congestion there is
little likelihood of securing both of these ends. Probably it will
become necessary to transfer what is now Sunday-school work to week-day
periods as well as to renovate public worship before a new generation of
churchmen can be guaranteed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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