XVII
THE TESTS OF A GOOD SUNDAY SCHOOL
In the United States more than a hundred thousand Sunday schools are in session every week. Some of them are very good, many are only moderately efficient, and some are poor in every respect. The question arises, what constitutes a good Sunday school? Is it possible to establish some standard of measurement by which the rank of any Sunday school can be fixed? In such a standard there must be several factors, for the points of excellence in Sunday school are not one, but many. It is the aim in this closing chapter to ascertain the criteria or the tests of a good Sunday school. The statement of these tests involves the summing up and in some measure the repetition of much already given throughout these pages.
1. Representative Character. The first test of a Sunday school is found in its relation to the community around it. The Sunday school is not a bed of exotic plants, dug up from their native soil, potted and protected in a conservatory. It is an outdoor garden wherein are cultivated the flowers and fruits that are indigenous to the region. A true Sunday school is a group of people drawn out of the larger world around it, and representing every element in that world, both as regards social life and age. If it represents the rich and the prosperous only, it is not a good school, unless the neighborhood is unfortunate in containing only such people. If it is a mission school for poor people in the midst of a self-supporting population, it is not a good school. If it includes few members above sixteen, and none above twenty-five years of age, it is not a good school, for it should embrace all ages from the infant to the grandfather. The school which is to stand on the roll of honor is one that fairly represents its constituency.
2. Organization. Another requirement for a good school is that it be well organized as a graded school. There may be Sunday schools which make up by their spirit for what they lack in system; yet the exceptions are few to the rule that in Sunday-school work organization is essential to success. It is true that machinery creates no power; there is nothing in a constitution and by-laws to make an institution successful. It is the efforts of living men and women that bring to pass results. But organization directs and economizes power; so that, other elements being equal, the graded school quickly becomes the best school. We have already seen that a graded school is one with departments defined, with the number of classes in each department fixed according to the needs of the school, with promotions at regular periods, based either on age or examination or merit, or on all three factors in combination, with lessons graded according to the departments, and, as its most important element, with a change of teachers when the pupil is promoted from a lower to a higher grade or department. The graded system is not easy to establish; it requires firmness and tact in the authorities, and a self-denying spirit on the part of teachers; but it will abundantly and quickly repay all it costs in effort and sacrifice, and it is an essential in a really good Sunday school.
3. Order. A good school is orderly, yet it is not too orderly. Everybody is in place at the proper time. At the minute, and not a minute later, the superintendent opens the school. If he rings a bell, it is a gentle, musical one, held up by the leader as a signal and scarcely sounded. There is not more confusion than at the opening of any other religious service. Only one service is conducted at a time; singing is worshipful, just as well as prayer, and the Scriptures are read thoughtfully and reverently. No officers are rushing up and down the aisles during the services; no loud calls are made for order; yet there is a suitable quietness when quietness is desirable. A good school is never disorderly, yet it cannot be said that the best school is always the most orderly. Occasionally one sees a Sunday school where order has gone to the extreme of repressing all enthusiasm, where the program is too finely cut and too thoroughly dried, where the mechanism moves with the precision of the lockstep in a state prison. The ideal of the Sunday school is not that of the French minister of education who is reported to have stated that he could look at his watch and tell at that minute what question was before each class in every school in France!
4. Spirit. For lack of a more definite term we call the next characteristic of a good Sunday school its spirit. In any successful school one feels rather than finds a peculiar and individual atmosphere. Every member, from the superintendent to the Primary scholar, manifests an interest in the institution; an interest of blended love, loyalty, enjoyment in it and enthusiasm for it. There is a social spirit in each class and in the school as a whole. Its members do not meet as passengers in a railway station, each one wrapped up in his own business and watching for his own train. They all have their individual friendships and social relations, yet a bond unites them all as members of one Sunday school. This peculiar esprit de corps, an interest in the institution, is a strongly marked feature in every progressive Sunday school.
5. Educational Efficiency. The Sunday school is in the world with a definite work—religious education. Its religion will be based on the Old Testament and kindred literature in a Jewish school; it will be based on both the Old and New Testament and supplemental literature in a Christian school; but whether Jewish or Christian, its work is the teaching of religion, as contained in the living Word, and illustrated by the lives and teachings of the heroes of the faith. The true test of a Sunday school is the answer that it can give to the question, "Does it teach the vital religious truths of the race so as to develop individual character and efficiency?" That is its task, and by its success in accomplishing it each school is to be judged; not by the splendor of its building, or the exactness of its machinery, or the enthusiasm of its members. The thirty or thirty-five minutes devoted to the lesson is the supremely important period in every true Sunday school. The time is often bound to be all too short for teaching divine truth, and printing it upon mind and memory so deeply that all the studies and pleasures of the six days between the two Sundays will not cause the teaching to fade. Yet the time is as long as the ordinary teacher (or preacher) can hold attention to one subject, and therefore in most classes it is sufficient. Toward that half hour of teaching, therefore, all the energies of the school, of the training class, home study, teachers' meeting, gradation, government, should be turned. For the vital aim of the Sunday school is the eternal message of God to men through men, so that men and women of the Christ spirit and character may be developed.
6. Character-Building. The first task, therefore, of the Sunday school is to teach the Word, but that teaching is only a means to an end, and that end is greater than mere intellectual knowledge—it is the building up of a complete character. This is more than "bringing souls to Christ," or leading them into church membership. If the sole aim of the Sunday school was to compass the salvation of the scholar and to surround him with the walls of a church, then we might safely dismiss our scholars when they have passed through a crisis of conversion and entered the church door. But the Sunday school is to do more than save its scholars from sin. It is to train them in the completeness of a Christian character; and such a character involves not only personal righteousness but also service for God and humanity. Its aim is not to take people apart out of the world, but to set them in the world, equipped for work in making the world a Christian world, and thereby establishing on earth the kingdom of heaven. The measure by which the Sunday school accomplishes such a work as this, constitutes the final, crucial test of its success.
It cannot be said that any one of these six essentials of a good Sunday school stands supreme. They do not march in Indian file; nor are they to be set one against another in a comparison of values. These traits of a complete Sunday school should rather be regarded as one of the New Testament writers describes the traits of a complete character, in that familiar yet only half-understood passage, "As in the harmony of a choral song, blend with your faith the note of energy, and with your energy the note of knowledge, and with your knowledge the note of self-mastery,"[12] through all the eight aspects of the Christian; so let these six essential elements be combined to form that noble institution, the ideal Sunday school.