The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work

by Allan Hoben

In cases where parent and physician have failed to do their duty, and the pastor is on proper terms of friendship with the boy, it becomes his duty to tell the boy plainly and purely a few of the important things which he ought to know in order to avoid moral shipwreck.

If credence is to be given to the startling reports of immorality in high schools, based, as is commonly claimed, upon ignorance, then the time has certainly come for plain speech, and the boys and girls should be gathered together in separate companies for instruction in sex hygiene and morality. Any education which makes no deliberate attempt to conserve human happiness and social welfare in this important respect is inadequate and culpable. The testimony that comes from juvenile courts, girls' rescue homes, and boys' reformatories constitutes a grave indictment of society for its neglect to impart proper information.

It is part of the minister's task to work for a better day in this as in every phase of moral achievement. Next to the physician he best knows the mental and physical suffering, the moral defeat, and the awful injustice to women and children whom the libertine pollutes with incurable diseases. If he is a true pastor, he will strive to keep the boys pure through expert instruction to parents, through personal advice, through wholesome activity and recreation, through courses on sexual hygiene in the public schools, through war on indecency in billboard, dance, and theater, through absolute chastity of speech, and, in general, through an ideal of life and service which shall lift the boys' ambitions out of the low and unhealthy levels of sense gratification. To put the spiritual nature in control is his high and sacred opportunity.

The importance of the minister's part in this struggle for the body and soul of youth is based upon the fact that in this critical encounter there is no aid that is comparable with religion. Thousands of honest, serious-minded men frankly confess that in modern conditions they see little hope of this battle being won without religion as a sanction of right conduct. The boy needs God, a God to whom he can pray in the hour of temptation. He needs to regard his life with all its powers as God's investment, which he must not squander or pervert.

Here, as everywhere else in boy-life, the loyalty appeal, which, as nothing else, will keep him true to mother and father, to society, and to God, stands the religious leader in good stead. Upon honor he will not violate the confidence of his parents, and the trust imposed in him by his Maker. Upon honor he will deport himself toward the opposite sex as he would wish other boys to regard his own sister; and the religious teacher has it within his power, if he will keep in touch with boys, to create and preserve an ideal of manly chivalry that will effectively withstand both the insidious temptations of secret sin and the bolder inducements of social vice.

This can never be done by the formal work of the pulpit alone. Nothing but the influence of a pure, strong man, mediated in part through the parents of the boy, supported by scientific facts, and operating directly on the boy's life, through the mighty medium of a personal friendship, can perform this saving ministry. If there were nothing more to be gained through intimate acquaintance with boys than thus fortifying them in this one inevitable and prolonged struggle, it would warrant all the energy and time consumed in the minister's attempt to enter into the hallowed friendship and frank admiration of the boys of his parish.

For such reasons it is important that the implications of discipleship be made very plain to the boy, and this in terms of specific conduct in the home, at school, on the playground, at work, and in all the usual social relations. Without this, there may be fatal inconsistencies in the boy's conduct, not because he is essentially vicious, but because he has been unable to interpret high-sounding sermons and biblical ideals in terms of commonplace duty. If the evangelical message encourages, condones, or permits this divorce, it becomes an instrument of incalculable harm. Boys must be held to a high and reasonable standard of personal duty and group endeavor.

From this point of view the weakest feature of the church boys' club is its tendency to overlook specific work for others. The serious-minded leader will not be altogether satisfied in merely holding boys together for a "good time," wholesome as that may be. The service ideal must be incorporated in the activities of the club. The nascent altruism of the boy should receive impetus and direction and the members should engage in united and intelligent social service. Give the boy a worthy job; give him a hard job; give him a job that calls for team work; and give him help and appreciation in the doing of it.

It is sometimes difficult to devise and execute a program of this kind because of the limited opportunities of the particular town in which the club exists and the narrow ideals of the church with which the club is affiliated. Yet it is always preferable to enlist the boys in some altruistic enterprise which lies close enough at hand to give it the full weight of reality. Only so can we satisfy the concrete value-judgment of the young matriculant in the great school of applied religion.

This, however, should not be to the exclusion of those vast idealistic movements for human good embodied in world-wide missionary propaganda of a medical, educational, and evangelistic type. Only, taking the boy as he is, it is not best to begin with these, because of their lack of reality to him and because of his inability to participate except by proxy. It is well that he should extend himself to some faraway need by contributing of his means, but these gifts will get their proper significance and his philanthropic life will preserve its integrity by performing the particular service which to his own immediate knowledge needs to be done.