XV
THE CONSTITUENCY OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
1. Relation to the Community. The Sunday school is a temple built of living stones; and the quarry from which they are taken in the rough, to be cut and polished for their places in the building, is the entire community in which the school is placed. In our time, more than ever before, the reasons are imperative why special study should be given to the community from which the school must draw its members. Certain principles of administration will become apparent when once the field is carefully considered.
(1) Constituency Adjacent. The population from which a given Sunday school draws its members must be generally that immediately around it. Some teachers and scholars may come from a distance, but even in this age of convenient transit by trains and trolley cars, it is found that, taking the church building as a center, the constituency of the Sunday school in a city is mostly within a radius of half a mile, and in the country within a mile. Throughout that sphere of influence the church should look well to the population, should know its proportionate elements, as far as possible should come into acquaintance with the families, and should plan to win, to evangelize, and to hold all its natural following.
(2) Membership Representative. Upon general and almost invariable principles, the Sunday school should represent all the elements of the population within its environment. If it be a residence section with isolated houses, each containing but one family of well-to-do people, the church is apt to be a family church, and a large Sunday school must not be looked for, since large mansions rarely contain large families. If, on the other hand, the neighborhood be populous, characterized by varied strata of society—a few rich, a goodly number fairly prosperous, and a greater mass of wage-earners, yet the section as a whole American and not foreign in its civilization—then a flourishing, active, and growing Sunday school should be expected. And it should embrace all these elements, the rich, the middle class, and the wage-earners, in the proportion which each bears to the community as a whole. If the school in such a population be small, or if it be composed exclusively of one class, whether it be the so-called better class or the mission class, there is a serious error in its policy. The true Sunday school should be representative of all the elements in the population. It is both a crime and a blunder to limit the efforts of a Sunday school to one class of society: a crime, because such a school leaves multitudes around it to perish; and a blunder, because the effort results in an anæmic, dwindling, dying institution.
(3) Methods Adapted. Almost every community, whether in city or in country, possesses some traits peculiar to itself. There may be two towns ten miles apart, one the wealthy residential suburb of a city, the other a settlement surrounding a great factory. The population of these two places will be in marked contrast, and the methods of Christian work successful in one will utterly fail in the other. One street or avenue in a city may mark the boundary line between family churches and mission churches. Within ten minutes' walk of each other may stand two churches of the same denomination, yet so utterly apart in spirit as to possess nothing in common but name. It is possible that each of these two organizations might learn something from the other, and might do their Master's work better by a closer community of interest and feeling. Yet it would be a mistake to introduce into either church all the plans that are successful in the other; or to reject in one Sunday school any method because it has proved a failure in another and a different field. The work of each church and Sunday school must be adapted to the population from which its membership is to be drawn.
2. The Changing Population. One of the most imperative questions confronting the gospel worker, both in the church and the Sunday school, arises from the constant changes taking place in our population. In the cities we see stately churches, once thronged, now well-nigh desolate, while their walls echo to the tread upon the sidewalk of a churchless multitude. In front of a fine old church, where once millionaires worshiped, the writer has often passed a news-stand upon which are for sale newspapers in seven different languages. And too often one finds that the churches of a generation ago have been turned into low theaters, or torn down, giving place to stores and office buildings. The general principle may be laid down, that a church in the city almost never lives more than one generation in the same building and with the same character. After thirty years as the very longest period, if it is to retain its members, it must follow them in the march up-town; or if it is to retain its location and still hold a congregation it must seek an absolutely new constituency, and to this end must transform its methods of work. Nor are these migrations of population confined to the city. The towns and villages are governed by the same law of change. A village, once the seat of quiet homes, is suddenly turned into a factory town, with a new and strange population. The farms on country roads, abandoned by the families that formerly tilled them, are occupied by foreigners of alien speech and manners. The building of a railroad will open new towns, and at the same time will make more than one deserted village. These changes in population must be considered in their relation to the work of the Sunday school. The movement will be characterized by varied traits in different places.
(1) A Growing Population. The change may be that of a healthy growth in population, making the community a desirable place for a church and a Sunday school. Such a development is constantly taking place in the newer portions of a city, whose population is moving from the center to the rim; or it may be noted in suburban towns, as facilities of transportation bring new residents from the metropolis; or it may appear in villages springing up on the line of a railroad, where home-seekers are settling and building habitations. Leaders in church and Sunday-school work must watch these growing centers, and provide wisely for their religious needs. It will not suffice to wait for these newcomers to build their own churches and organize their own Sunday schools. Most of them are taxed to the utmost in building or buying their own homes, and will scarcely realize their need until the habit of neglecting worship has become fixed, and their children grow up without religious education. The old and strong churches must extend a hand to the settlers, must preëmpt church sites at the very beginning, must help to erect chapels, for a time must supply workers, and must set the current of the new settlement Godward and churchward. The reward of their labor and their liberality will not long be delayed.
(2) A Declining Population. There are places where the population has lessened, making the work of the Sunday school increasingly difficult and its results meager. It may be in the city, where business has crowded away the dwellers of other years, as in the lower end of Manhattan Island in New York. There tall office buildings and warehouses stand on sites formerly occupied by churches, but no longer needed, now that almost the only residents are the janitors and their families, living on the roofs of the towerlike temples of trade. But oftener the region of the declining population is found in the country. Villages once prosperous have gradually lost their inhabitants. In places where three or four churches, each with its Sunday school, were formerly well supported, there is now scarcely a constituency for one. Yet all these churches, though decayed and dying by inches, are still maintained; and each church still houses a discouraged Sunday school, attended by a faithful few, but with no hope of growth and an imminent peril of extinction. If loyalty to a denomination could give way to love for the kingdom of Christ, these might be consolidated into one church and one Sunday school for all the community. We venture the prophecy that before the twentieth century comes to its close this will be throughout the American continent the accepted settlement of the question. May its fulfillment be not long delayed! In the meantime these decayed but still enduring Sunday schools and churches in a community should seek for peace and friendship, not emphasizing the points of doctrine or of system that differ, but those that agree, and striving to maintain the unity of the spirit in a bond of love.
(3) A Population Changing Socially. A serious problem often arises, not from a decline but from a change in the social condition of the population within the sphere of the church. The downtown church may have been forsaken by its former members, but people of another class, and in greater numbers, have taken their places. The mansions have become boarding houses, flats and apartment houses have arisen, while the thronged sidewalks, and the children playing in the streets, are evidence that the material for members of the church and the Sunday school is greater than before. True, the new inhabitants are of a different social order from the old, clerks and porters instead of merchants, employees instead of employers, working people in place of the leisure class. The fact that the social level of the neighborhood may be regarded by the worldly-minded as lower than formerly does not lessen its need of the gospel, nor render it less promising for Christian work. The church should look upon its field with unprejudiced eyes, should have an understanding of the time; should be alert to see and to seize its opportunity; and should change its methods with its changed constituency. The field must not be abandoned; it must be cultivated, and new forms of tillage will bring forth abundant harvests.
(4) An Alien Population. The most perplexing of all social problems arises when immigration has swept into the district surrounding the church a tide of people whose birth and speech are foreign, supplanting and in large measure driving out the native population. There are sections in our cities where the signs on the stores are all Bohemian, or Polish, or Yiddish; where an English-speaking church would remain absolutely empty, though thousands throng the streets. It may be that in such conditions gospel work under American methods can no longer be maintained; and a removal may be necessary. But even in the most unpromising fields this conclusion should not be hastily reached. We spend large sums in sending missionaries to the lands from which some strangers come; should we not embrace opportunities of evangelizing these at our own door? There are difficulties, but they are not nearly as insuperable as those in foreign fields. These foreign-born or foreign-descended children sit beside our own in the public school; should we shut them out from our Sunday schools? In less than a generation millions of these boys and girls will be as thoroughly American as our own children. When we consider the question of abandoning any field on account of its foreign population, let us widen our horizon of thought to embrace the future as well as the present, and then form our conclusion concerning the duty of the Sunday school to the community.
3. Practical Suggestions. A few hints, some of them already given, may summarize the practical side of the subject:
(1) Study the Field. The Sunday school must live not in the past, but in the present, with a clear vision of the future. It must not only cherish a loving memory of its field as it has been, but understand thoroughly what it is, and what forces are shaping it for the future. The leaders in each Sunday school working for itself, or preferably those conducting the Sunday schools of a neighborhood working unitedly, should ascertain the nationality, religious condition, and church relations of every family in the district; and not only of every family, of every individual who may have a room in a boarding house. Each political organization knows the residence and party proclivities of every voter in the district; and the churches may learn from the politicians practical lessons upon the best methods of work.
(2) Cultivate the Field. Since the scholars must come to the school from the population around it, they should be sought, brought in, taught, and evangelized, with all the energy and wisdom which the church possesses. And not only the scholars, but also, in large degree, the teachers must be home-born and home-taught; therefore the Sunday school, to be successful, must train up workers from its own constituency.
(3) Provide for all Elements. By diligent and constant effort the school should be made representative of all ages, of all classes, of all sections, and as far as practicable of all races found in its community.
(4) Adapt Methods. If a former constituency has removed from the field, and a new population has surged in, the new element must be looked upon as the constituency of the school. Its needs must be recognized, however different they may be from the needs of the past; and plans must be formed to meet those needs, whatever transformation of the school the new plans may involve.