The necessary limitation of the number of these lectures caused the giving up of the first intention to open the course with a treatment of the historical method of Bible study. Every lecture is based upon the use of that method. ...the Scriptures cannot be understood, nor their power appreciated, without some knowledge of the historical situations out of which they grew. [From the preface.]
Young People Must Live Out Their Own Lives
Necessarily the pastor must deal with all ages. He must serve life in all stages. A vast variety of needs will present itself to him. We are concerned now with growing life. The ministry to the young is of special importance. Careers lie before those whose past years are few. To shape the lives of tomorrow is a work of great responsibility. Today we discard notions derived from figures based upon the plasticity of youth. We no longer seek to mold life as if it were clay or putty, impressing ourselves upon youthful life to make it in our own image, and denting it with our own peculiarities. We regard young life rather as a vine with its own vitality, present human experience as a trellis, and stimulate the plant to develop according to its own nature. Every young life conscious of itself feels as did David in his teens when the traditionalists put Saul’s armor upon him. He uttered immortal words1 which should be graven deep in the consciousness of every young person: “I cannot go in these.” No human being can kill giants with the equipment of another. His own sling and stone are worth far more than all the accouterment from the arsenals of another. David fought a great battle between originality and conventionality. It occurred in his own soul. The world is moved forward only when originality wins in the contest with conventionality. What has served its purpose in the past does not necessarily achieve results in a new day with changed conditions and fresh antagonists. This characteristic spirit of youth claims the skilful attention of the pastor. We may not make illustrative excursions into the fields of practical life, for our concern now is specially with the teaching function of the minister. Each generation must live out its own life. Each soul is God’s real estate2 tilled by all the past and yet enriched by its own contemporary life and personal efforts. Each generation hands on to its successor the wealth of the past increased by its own attainments.
11Sam. 17: 39. 21Cor. 3: 9; Cf. Deut. 32: 9; Jer. 10: 16, where the word for farm has developed into a name for Israel.
IV A. Discoveries Concerning Religious Education
IVA 1. Neglected in Most Homes
No intelligent pastor can long be the servant of any group of people who does not make certain important discoveries concerning both old and young with regard to the knowledge of the Scriptures.
Education in the knowledge of the Bible is virtually ignored in the home. Parents no longer exercise the mediatorial priestly function. The good old days when the family gathered around the parent who conducted household worship seem to have vanished. This beautiful and helpful service at least produced an impression upon the lives of the children which all subsequent experiences did not efface. There was only the devotional use of the Bible, but much of its language stuck to memory, and in after years certain words and conceptions of the Scriptures came out of the storehouses of memory and achieved important results in the lives of the mature. In only a few homes relatively has even this praiseworthy custom continued. Now there is little or no Biblical instruction in the home. However, more than a decade ago, mothers are reading Bible stories to their children. Books have been issued which tell these narratives so far as possible in the very words of the Bible. Children who read these stories or listen to them are becoming acquainted with incidents and persons in Biblical history. Occasionally some interested mothers and far fewer interested fathers take the time to go over the church-school lessons with their boys and girls, and try to help their children to obtain a knowledge of the Scriptures. Probably such parents are now learning more than they ever knew before by such aid to their offspring. So far as adult study of the Scriptures in the home is concerned, it is to be feared that very little is now done. Books which give aid to an intelligent study of the Bible have not yet found a place in many home libraries, nor are they read by Christian fathers and mothers as eagerly as the latest novel. Why should not parents who help their children with lessons assigned by the public school, with equal enthusiasm aid their children in studying the lessons given by the church school? We do not refer to classes of boys and girls organized for catechetical instruction with reference to church-membership. We are confining ourselves wholly to a real study of the Scriptures. To no appreciable extent are homes factors in promoting the same real study of the Scriptures that is given to history and literature in lessons assigned by the public schools for home study.
IVA 2. Unsatisfactory in Many Church Schools
The efforts of the church school are mostly unsatisfactory in spite of the tremendous advances made in the last quarter of a century. Very often boys and girls are forced to go, and find themselves in the church school with a reluctant spirit that is essentially unreceptive. Far too often indifferent parents indulge their children, and absences from the church school are regarded with complacency. The equipment of the school is not such as to make the pupil enthusiastic. The teachers yet constitute the main problem. Often these are for the most part well-meaning, pious people, who, without training or any proper knowledge of the Bible themselves seek to comment upon passages in sermonets for the purpose of impressing moral lessons, or who strive for letter-perfect recitation of catechisms, or who have gone through various so-called “lesson helps” and mentally scissor hortatory patches from these to make a sort of homiletic crazy quilt to throw over youthful souls that they vainly imagine are shivering with the chilliness of ignorance or the icy darkness of sin. Let us cheerfully grant that all who undertake this work, even without training, deserve the highest praise for the motives they have and the efforts they make to help others into knowledge of the way of life. The object of the church school today prevailingly seems to be evangelization through appeal rather than through education, to persuade the pupils to join the church through various kinds of importunities, rather than so to present the truth that by its own power under the brooding of the Holy Spirit it shall seize upon the hearts of the pupils. Think of the olden days when there was a uniform lesson system and precisely the same ten verses of the Bible were presented to the little tots ten years old and the grown folks as well. Often these selections from visions of Ezekiel or of the Apocalypse were made to do duty for all ages, from infants to those approaching second childhood, without reference to differences of experience or ability. A happier day came upon us when graded lessons were introduced. Nevertheless, in spite of efforts to make the church school a real school, thoroughly educational in its processes and results, the overwhelming majority of our schools have not yet responded to this ideal, which indeed is not yet appreciated by a very large proportion of them.
IVA 3. Superior Equipment and Methods of State Schools
Compare these institutions with the public schools of all grades. Contrast lesson leaflets, too often cheap in material and character, with handsomely illustrated and well-bound text-books. Over against thoroughly trained teachers set the well-meaning volunteers who know comparatively little about what they are to teach and the psychology and pedagogy of instruction. Contrast the voluntary and tardy attendance on Sundays with compulsory, punctual presence on week-days. Set side by side the scanty church-school equipment, which is little more than a shelter, and the handsome, attractive, well-furnished, and adequate buildings for the training which the State is giving to its wards. Compare the methods of instruction pursued by the untrained Bible teachers with those followed by instructors in State schools. Think of the difference between all kinds of apparatus at the disposal of the scholar in the public schools and an almost utter deficiency of maps, blackboards, stereopticon pictures, material for making models, and all other facilities for making indelible impressions upon the minds of the scholars.
Is it any wonder that the same people who attend public schools five days in the week and go to the church schools for an hour and a half on Sunday, receive these impressions: that botany, chemistry, biology, geography, history, and everything else they study on week-days is worthy of the best that can be provided by taxation to enable them to learn and to train their minds in the processes of acquiring knowledge, but that a knowledge of the Bible, Christlike character, right social relations, and Christianity itself is content with careless methods, meager equipments, inadequate text-books, untrained teachers, and the absence of anything that will compare with the equipment of the day-school? Is it a wonder that the young come to feel that the State is generously eager to produce intelligent citizens while the Church is willingly parsimonious in efforts to produce intelligent Christians? Will not the young person also be impressed with the fact that in the public schools he is taught to observe facts, to have a sense of their majesty, and to draw his own inferences from facts, while in the church school he is expected to receive certain statements upon an authority which he may not interrogate? Undaunted and unafraid, he attacks every subject brought to him in the public school, and is encouraged to think for himself. In the church school his teachers are apt to tell him that the interrogation-mark must be omitted from his mental furniture. Is it not true that on Sundays religion seems to come to him sealed with an inviolable stamp, while on week-days all other knowledge is open to him and insists upon the spirit of free inquiry? How seldom he is urged to have the mood of the simple shepherds of Bethlehem who said3 in the face of words from heaven and the vision in the skies, “Let us now go all the way to Bethlehem, and see this thing that has come to pass.” In other words, does the church school supply the same inspiration and have the same insistent demands for personal investigation in the study of the Bible that are noticeable in secular education? Although it may not be sufficiently clear to find expression in language, this contrast is mentally made by our boys and girls. It is felt and acted rather than spoken. Soon the work of the church school comes to take a lower place in the esteem of young people than that of the public school.
3Luke 2: 15.
IVA 4. Influence of the Non-academic Curriculum
Let us also think of what we may call the non-academic curriculum in which all our young people are being more or less educated. Life outside of the home, the public school, and the church school is constantly playing upon the lives of the young and bringing hardly any suggestion of devotion to spiritual reality.4 Newspapers, magazines, novels, billboards, movies, entertainments, sports, companion-ships, the radio, and a thousand other things are pouring their contributions toward character into the souls of young people, and in hardly any of these does there appear the slightest inducement for study of the Bible. Literature of many kinds presents itself for perusal, while the Bible is thrust aside and its study is considered optional. Alas. that any parent should ever punish a child for reading some forbidden book or for any other misconduct by compelling the boy or girl to read so many chapters in the Bible! What possible good could such a discipline accomplish when the reading of the Scriptures becomes punitive? With what kind of spirit would any real red-blooded young person read the Bible as a matter of discipline except that of reluctance, repugnance, and the desire to have a disagreeable experience ended as soon as possible? Not in this repugnant way do the truths of Scripture soak into the souls of young people. What, let us ask, is the total educational effect of all these non-academic experiences which play upon the lives of growing boys and girls? We might ask identically the same question concerning the adults. Is it not too true, alas, that all these things work against specific efforts which are making for the religious education of young people and for the promotion of their taste for a knowledge of the Scriptures? How can they come to love the Bible when the perusal of it is used for punishment, or when life and time are so crowded with countless diverting things, that they do not have nor will they take time for acquaintance with the highest and best that history has given?
4Matt. 13: 22.
IVA 5. Inevitable Results of These Conditions
The inevitable results of these legacies of the past and of present conditions is a falling away from attendance upon the church school and a weakening of control by the home at the very period of life when these are most needed. When well into the adolescent stage other interests so appeal to the young that it has come to be thought rather beneath the dignity of the growing person to attend the church school. The Bible is regarded as a queer literature not to be studied as other literature. Interest in the spiritual life ranks below that in sports and social activities. Diligence is given to high-school studies and to preparation for college because of inherent interest or of necessity to attain an objective, and soon the church school has lost its grip. Nor does the work of young people’s organizations compensate for this disaster. Their emphasis is not upon the knowledge of the Scriptures so much as upon problems of practical life, contemporary occurrences, and the questions that concern the soul developing in this period of physical, mental, and social ferment. How far our present experiences in these matters are due to the past is a question into which we cannot go. Even if we could thoroughly explain current deflections, that would not correct them. Furthermore, we must remember that our modern ideals of religious education and the methods of securing a knowledge of the Scriptures that have displaced those which formerly existed, have not yet had one generation of life in which to test the efficiency of these newer methods. It is partly because of our higher ideals and better methods, and partly because of changes in life’s conditions and diversions, that we are confronted with the situations barely outlined.
IV B. The Service of the Pastor
IVB 1. Anticipating College Tests of Church-school Work
What then can the teaching pastor do in this state of affairs? If he really be a lover of young life, his longing will be to bring youth into possession of the ideals of the Bible which shall dominate their lives in all relations.
He should remember that the education in the church school will be tested by college life. Deficiency in the knowledge of the Scriptures, even so far as their language is concerned, has been amply attested by examinations of those who have entered college life. Said a young man not long since, “I could wish either that there had been no Bible, or that the great writers of literature had made no allusion to it.” He had been forced to reveal his ignorance of the Scriptures, and therefore the fact that he could not read intelligently certain great masters in the field of English literature. This is sad enough, though it disclosed only a lack of acquaintance with the language and characters of the Bible. Worse than this, however, is the fact that such ignorance inevitably proves that there is no knowledge of the meaning and message of the Biblical books. The college test was only the trifling storm that revealed the foundation of sand in the inability to read English literature understandingly. Worse storms play upon the souls of young men and young women and produce far more damaging wrecks than those in the realm of English literature. The pastor can make it his business to anticipate these judgment days that come not only in college examinations in literature, but far more in the tests of daily life and the temptations that are sure to arise from social environment. To have ignorance revealed is only mortifying. To have a soul unfortified by moral buttresses assailed by temptations is alarming. Some colleges admit matriculates upon certificate of graduation by high schools. This means only that a good foundation has been laid for the freshman year’s work. Is it too wild a question to ask whether the time will ever come when a certificate of graduation from a church school will signify to a denominational college that its possessor has some knowledge of the Bible, and is also ethically and religiously desirable as a matriculate? Before that time comes our church schools must make great progress. Do we dare to hint that any well-organized system of denominational education will seek to standardize its church schools, as well as seek recognition for its colleges in standardized State schemes of education? Teaching pastors are the only agencies that can remove the reproach of ignorance concerning the Bible that hinders our youth from becoming intelligent students of literature in our mother tongue. When writers of classic literature, and novelists, and contributors to magazines, and even editors of daily papers use quotations from the Bible, and make allusion to its events and characters, is it not a shame that products of church schools cannot understand their references? They should at least read literature intelligently.
IVB 2. Guarding Against Teaching That Must Be Unlearned
The teaching pastor can also see that there is no teaching that must be eventually unlearned. Why should a child grow up to experience the dreadful shock of discovering that his information and training have been mistaken? He will soon come to have a contempt for an institution that has fed his growing mind upon conventional conceptions, when those who are the purveyors of spiritual truth have given him things that he must cast aside. In his high school and college career he will surely learn that the history of our physical universe and of our planet has been turned over to the sciences of astronomy and geology, and that the story of man’s origin and development has been committed to anthropology and kindred sciences. When he faces the modern view of the physical universe and of man, and finds that he must either abandon the Bible as a source of scientific knowledge of anything whatever, or if he clings to the error that the Bible was intended to teach science and history and that he must throw away what his schools teach, what horrible alternatives present themselves to his mind! It is more than foolish, it is wicked to tell youth that it must accept the crude, unscientific ideas of the Bible concerning psychology, anthropology, cosmogony, or other matters relating to the material world or else reject the Bible as a whole.5 The Bible was not meant to teach any sort of science, nor history. Biblical writers used current ideas prevailing in their times as vehicles for religious and moral conceptions. They employed historical material for preaching purposes without anxiety as to its historical accuracy.6 For church schools to ignore facts is unethical. To try to force our progressively intelligent youth to believe untrue theories as to the Bible, or to conceal from maturing rational natures the real nature of the Scriptures, is to prepare young people for inevitable personal pain in discarding errors conscientiously believed, and to insure disgust for persons and institutions that cause them such experiences. The teaching pastor who really knows his Bible can prevent all this by seeing that the boys and girls in his congregation are never taught what they will have to unlearn. It is hard to root out a mistake. It is wiser to implant a truth. Pulling up tares also injures the wheat,7 said Jesus. No one has a moral right to build an error into the mind of a growing human being and cause that person in later years to experience the mental and spiritual pain of casting out the error. In religion we cannot feed the growing mind upon fairy tales with a certainty that afterward the adult will escape the agony of unlearning and safely glide into the reality. Not so is the course of religious instruction. The teaching pastor will see that this calamity is prevented and will guard against such a tragedy in the religious experiences of growing youth. The enthusiasm of faith, if not belief itself, is rudely shocked by such needless jolts.
5See Article on “Ancient Hebrew Science,” by Allen Howard Godbey, Ph. D., in “Methodist Quarterly Review” for January, 1923.
6Cf. 1Sam. 21: 9 and 2Sam. 21: 19; and other illustrations.
7Matt. 13: 29.
IVB 3. Preventing Moral Shock in Educational Development
He can also prevent the moral shock that will inevitably come to the misinstructed person when he enters into wider regions of knowledge during a college course. How calamitous this is, and how it vitally affects the future of those who experience it! At a certain college under denominational auspices the visiting preacher one evening talked individually with eighteen young men. The consecutive interviews lasted until the early morning. Every one of these eighteen was either a junior or a senior. Sixteen of the eighteen had entered college with the view of becoming ministers of the gospel. Every one of these had abandoned his purpose. The seventeenth young man came to ask how as a teacher of his Greek letter fraternity Bible class he could pursue the same methods of historical study of the Bible that were employed in the classrooms of the university where literature was taught. The eighteenth young man came to talk about the possibility of entering the ministry. His initial question was, “Can I enter the ministry and retain my intellectual self-respect as it has been developed by my university experience?” He was urged not to enter the ministry if it meant the forfeiting of that self-respect. What was the trouble with these young men? It was not due to university training. They had come from churches where the ministers were pious enough, and thoroughly Christian, and passionately eager to bring young life into church-membership. But these pastors had not been impressed with the sacred obligation of a teaching ministry. They had allowed to come into the minds of these fine young fellows conceptions of the Bible itself and ideas of incidents in the Bible which were inevitably destined to be overthrown when these young men came into contact with modern educational experiences and methods in a first-class university. They abandoned the ministry because in their home churches, presided over by men who had led them to join the church, they had seen in the pastor himself no evidence of a knowledge of the very things they had come to know as reality, much less any ability to integrate genuine Biblical knowledge that was not possessed by their good pastors with the realities discovered in their college life. There were sixteen cases where tradition and bondage to unintelligent conceptions of the Bible had been shivered by contact with the truth. The holy purposes for their lives had been abandoned, and there was none to save. Does this one experience throw light upon the dearth of men in the ministry? Let us not blame our educational institutions. The fault lies further back. It lies with pastors who will not realize their obligations for the teaching ministry. Moreover, if one temporary college pastor had in a single night such an experience with sixteen young men, what would be the situation at all colleges if the truth were known? The abundance of our ministerial supply is partly in the keeping of intelligent pastors who know how to exercise a teaching ministry. In the face of facts like these let us not mourn because our seminaries are not crowded and pastors for churches are scarce, but let us send out those who know how to avert the tragedies indicated and to see that young people going from their churches into secondary schools and universities shall have such a conception of the Scriptures and of the religious realities they were intended to convey, that there shall be no shock when these young people come to study sciences and are made the beneficiaries of our educational ideals as outlined in the previous lecture. This integration of true knowledge of the Bible with the knowledge that comes through so-called secular education is one of the holiest obligations in a pastor’s relations with his people.
IVB 4. Welcoming College Graduates When They Return Home
There is also the vital problem of the return of the young man or woman from the college to the home church. How often they look forward with pleasure to resuming social relations in their home towns, but with dread to returning to church connections. The home-church atmosphere they left has become stale compared with the one that is fresher and richer and more congenial to their cultured lives. With what kind of a reception will they meet? Will there be a place for the attitudes they have acquired and methods they have pursued and the deep altruistic ambitions that have arisen in their hearts? Will there be hospitality for them? Will they have to return to a group yet under the dominion of ideas and conceptions which these young people have thrown aside for what is better? Must they return to the stifling air of conventionality, or will there be room for them to breathe the atmosphere of reality? This is a fundamental question. Just here lies the explanation of the fact that so many graduates of our colleges and universities when they return to their homes, have a merely nominal connection with their churches. What should the teaching pastor say to his congregation? Let him give this message: “You men and women put your hands into your pockets four times partly or wholly for educational purposes. First, you pay taxes, part of which goes to support a State scheme of education which begins with the kindergarten and ends with the State university. A second time you contribute to found, support, and endow denominational schools. You do well, for they have an important function in the religious life of young people. The plastic, adolescent period of life is concurrent with the beginning of a college career, and this is the time when religious impressions can be implanted indelibly. State schools do not dare to attempt evangelistic or religious efforts. A third time you put your hands in your pockets to send your sons and daughters to these State or denominational schools which you by taxes and gifts have founded and are supporting. It costs you something to put into the minds and lives of your children the things for which education stands. You dare not deny them the advantages which a college career gives except at the awful expense of their advantageous future. Will you a fourth time put your hands in your pockets to pay for the salary of an uneducated, incompetent minister who will denounce as godless the very schools which your taxes and gifts have established and which you have patronized at such heavy expense, and compel your cultured sons and daughters upon their return from college either to stay away from the church if they wish to maintain their intellectual self-respect, or if they attend from a sense of filial obligation, to leave their intellectual self-respect with their umbrellas in the corridor?” This is a vital problem. The solution lies with the minister who can bring to the very flower of his people, the educated adults, and the fresh, beautiful life of cultured young men and women the reality revealed in the Bible in such a way as to integrate itself with the culture of these young people.
IVB 5. Helping Those Without Educational Advantages
We have been thinking of young people who have the experiences of school life. What of those whose circumstances prevent their enjoyment of such privileges? Do they not need even more than others the same care? In countless thousands of cases the church not only must be the source of religious comfort and help, but also must furnish social contacts, and very frequently is the only educational factor in their lives. The very misfortunes that compel many to abandon all hope of educational opportunities, only emphasize more keenly the need for such an education in the knowledge of the Scriptures as the church and the church school can bring. It is interesting to discover that in some of these lives the hunger for a real knowledge of the Bible is more keen than with many who have been able to complete the high-school courses or to enter colleges. About all such lives there play the diversions of leisure hours. Their literary food comes mostly from daily papers and such periodicals as may come to their homes. Not the least-interesting fact is that often in their business occupations there are conversations about religious matters and discussions concerning the meaning of the Bible. They hear and also read many statements which are misleading and give them mistaken conceptions of the Scriptures. Is it not of the utmost importance that to these the teaching pastor shall see that there is given, through every avenue possible, accurate instruction concerning the Bible? Indeed, the best-qualified teachers should be in charge of classes of such persons. There is no reason why they should not become thoroughly acquainted with the nature of Biblical literature and the messages of the sacred writings. Any person of average intelligence can easily grasp the facts. Volume after volume of most helpful literature in Biblical study has been issued. Even where it is not possible for persons to purchase these books, well-equipped church schools can buy them and lend them to the pupils as is now done in our public schools. Even public libraries can be induced to place them on their shelves. The time has long since passed when any one can plead either poverty or a lack of education as an excuse for ignorance. Let us not forget that the uneducated should appeal all the more powerfully to the unselfish motives of those who know. Such persons should be lifted out of the danger of untrue conceptions of the Bible and saved from moral shock which will inevitably come, through the leadership of those who have been misinformed. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that, without regard to any school advantages, the main facts concerning the Scriptures and the vital truths that influence life are easily appreciated by any person of average intelligence. What more gracious service could a pastor render than to gather such young men and women into classes on Sundays or week-nights to be led by thoroughly competent persons whose spirit of love will find keenest joy in leading them into the green pastures and beside the still waters of divine truth?
IVB 6. Promoting Educational Evangelism
The teaching pastor will also promote educational evangelism.8 Each child is born with religious as well as physical, social, and intellectual capacity. Adults unfold these according to methods and ideals that human experience has attained. Educational evangelism proceeds according to the religious experiences of the race. We do not mean the mere imparting of information, but the unfolding of the religious capacity. That process never ceases. On this native human capacity the Holy Spirit relies in all his appeals to the human heart, no matter what the avenue of approach or the instrumentality used. Upon this same ability of the soul all evangelistic effort relies. The foreign missionary in his appeal to the savage heart also depends upon it. Jesus himself rested his hope of reaching his contemporaries upon the same essential basis. It was to the “common people” that he said,9 “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.” He said that common sense capable of judging weather signs was adequate enough to make spiritual decisions.10 He is the true light “which lights every man.”11 Educational evangelism believes utterly that moral changes wrought in human beings are due to the Spirit of God brooding over souls. Conversion is that experience, gradual or sudden, when the moral, religious, and ethical capacities of a human being dominated by Jesus Christ control all other capacities, physical, intellectual, and social, in all realms of life. There is no other sort of conversion worth thinking about. The methods of educational evangelism are very simple. They are the impartation of assimilable truth, the expression of that truth in life, and association with those who have had the experience of conversion. The teaching pastor has his great opportunity here. More and more truth and the soul which belong to each other, can be brought together. There will come a time when the soul will yield to the truth, especially if the growing life of the young is taught to practise so much of the truth as has been assimilated, and is surrounded by others who likewise live the spiritual reality they know. Such a ministry provided for in the conduct of the church school should result in a steady influx of the young into the church-membership because of the confessions of faith in the Christ who has increasingly been brought near to the young lives through intelligent presentation of his life. He always draws us when he is lifted up.12 It is possible from the very beginning of a child’s entrance into the church school so to introduce the pupil to the great Teacher that the desire to learn from and to follow him will become growingly strong until a public avowal of discipleship becomes as natural as the blooming of a plant or the ripening of fruit. This ideal should be the normal one with all church schools, rather than the extraordinary and spasmodic methods to which revivalism resorts in its appeals to those who have not had such wise training. It should be as natural and easy for a child to go from a Christian home and a properly conducted church school into church-membership, as for the moonlight to give place to sunshine. The gospel narratives show us the progress of men who first became disciples of the great Teacher, and through years of steady development became apostles and writers of gospels. Why not expect the same process to be repeated with the same Teacher and the same truth, and the same Holy Spirit to energize souls into spiritual life and progress? In the majority of cases the appeal for open confession of discipleship to Christ will come to those in our church schools who have already surrendered to our Lord, and have yielded because of the gradual and steady appeal of the Master himself and his truth, if educational evangelism has been pursued in the church school. “Decision Day” will not be choosing time, but the opportunity for revealing choices previously made. It will be the uncovering, not the formation, of “the will to believe.” And such harvests of confessions may be expected perennially rather than annually.
8See article by the writer in Official Report of the Sixteenth International Sunday School Convention, Kansas City, Missouri, June 21-27, 1922. pp. 129-134. Published by International Sunday School Council of Religious Education, Chicago, Ill.
9John 10: 37.
10Matt. 16: 1-3.
11John 1: 9.
12John 12: 32.
IV C. The Forms of this Ministry
IVC 1. Pulpit and Personal Service
What forms will this ministry take? The methods which the teaching pastor can follow have already been generally described.
His pulpit and personal ministry will inevitably have a powerful effect. The impact of truth upon growing life can be provided for by conversations with the young, through sermons, and through the minister’s attitude toward the Scriptures. A minister should never be so busy with the mechanics and chores of his pastoral life that he cannot take time to minister to individual souls. One has only to recall the conversations of our Lord with Nicodemus, the woman at the well, Zaccheus, and others to be impressed with a sense of the privilege of teaching individual persons. The best results are accomplished in this way. Dr. Francis Wayland once said that preaching to an audience was like swishing a saturated sponge into the air, and that the most that could be hoped for was that some drops of water would fall into the mouths of the empty bottles in front of the speaker. In conversation one takes the bottle by the neck and pours the water into it. There can be no greater joy in the minister’s life nor any more efficient service to a soul than personal teaching concerning the holy book and the things of life.
IVC 2. Control of Church-school Curriculum
The minister should have full charge of directing the curriculum of his church school. If the school is designed to be nothing more than a mere aggregation of human bodies, and its success mostly measured by arithmetical standards, and statistics are to be the criteria by which it is judged, then of course whatever will attract human beings to come will be used to promote such ideals. Or if the ideals of the school are to be simply mechanical, and the pupils are to be drilled in catechisms and in repetitions of passages of Scriptures and other feats of memoriter gymnastics, then a prepared set of victrola discs as well as human beings will answer for teachers. But if the institution is to be really a school with educational ideals and correct pedagogical methods, then it is of the utmost importance that the intelligent teaching pastor shall have general direction of all instruction which is given. There can be nothing but praise for the devotion of officers and teachers who seek to bring together as many persons as possible in attendance upon the church school. There is still higher praise due to those who use the church school as an opportunity for evangelistic work, who aim to bring its members into church fellowship. Nevertheless, the highest of all questions is not what is the roll strength, nor what is the average attendance, nor even how many scholars have joined the church, but how far is the whole church engaged in the study of the Scriptures and of divine truth, and what is the quality of the work done in the school. The church school should be something more than a mere recruiting agency for the church roll. It should be thoroughly, deeply educational. For this reason the teaching pastor should have the general direction of its policies. Every one knows that there is sore need here. Let the wide-awake laymen lead in administrative affairs, but when it comes to the curriculum of instruction, if the pastor be competent, he should dominate. He can rally around him a board of education composed of those who are intelligent in methods and ideals. Such an arrangement will provide for the best care of the young, and if right methods are adopted, the best results will inevitably follow.
IVC 3. Supervision of Young People’s Organizations
The young people’s organization also affords an opportunity not to be despised. So often the topics of these meetings are assigned by the central directorates with which the organizations are connected, and they relate to every conceivable realm of life. This is as it should be. Nevertheless, all topics should be considered in the light of spiritual principles and ideals revealed in the Scriptures. The pastor can see to it that no mistaken interpretations of the Bible are brought to bear upon the practical concerns of life. Headquarters of denominational organizations of young people should not be allowed to interfere with a proper development of any local group. As the minister is responsible for the religious lives of all the members of his flock he should have the general direction of all Biblical study pursued by organizations connected with the church. Here is another opportunity in dealing with his young people. “I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth,” so said an old saint.13 The crown of rejoicing in every pastor’s life is the vision of spiritual life in those whom he has helped.14 Like our Lord, we live that men may have life, and have it abundantly.15 Like the great Teacher, all theological teachers, all school and college teachers, all teaching pastors find their delight and the justification of their lives in the characters and usefulness of those whom they have taught.
133John 4. 14Phil. 4: 1; 1Thess. 2: 19. 15John 10: 10.
Preface lectures: ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX
[Note: Lecture IV carefully compared to book on Thursday, 6-18-1998. All discovered errors and omissions corrected (this is not a claim of perfection!). The use of colors and links (if any), of course, are my additions, and the purposes may relate to considerations beyond the scope of the lecture. ...wcb2]
William C. Bitting II
wbitting@yahoo.com First posted 5/16/98. Revised 10/20/00 (prior 6/20/98).