Sunday-School Success Part 17

As we need to emphasize the advantages of bad weather, so we need to remember the dangers of fine weather. Now, the teacher must be mindful not to lose the individuals in the crowd, or his teaching sense in the temptation to harangue. Now, the superintendent must remember that his unifying and organizing skill is especially needed. If rainy days are best for study and personal work, fair days, and, above all, hot days, are best for singing and concert drill in reading and questioning.

As our days, so shall our strength be, if we are Christ's, dear Sunday-school workers; but different kinds of days need different kinds of strength.

Chapter x.x.xVI

A Profitable Picnic

A large number of Sunday-schools are in the habit of holding a picnic every summer. In spite of the countless jests at the expense of the Sunday-school picnic, the custom is in every way commendable. Where can teacher and scholars, superintendent and teachers, better come into that familiar, every-day contact that tells so much of character and for character, than out under the open sky and in the merry meadows? And yet why is it that the very word "picnic" makes most Sunday-school teachers groan, and presents to the superintendent's mind a picture no more delectable than of hot, dusty cars, pus.h.i.+ng, quarreling children, red-faced teachers, and lunches seized on by ants?

Of course, in moving so large a body of people, especially of youngsters, many untoward events are to be expected; but nevertheless, when the picnic is not a conspicuous success, there is usually one reason: it was not well planned for. So many managers of picnics are nothing but transportation managers! Getting a reduction of railroad fare, packing and unpacking the lunches, filing the children in and out of the cars,--such details sum up their plans. As for entertainment on the picnic grounds,--why, turn the children loose, and they will take care of that part of it!

On the contrary, he is a wise man that can entertain himself well and profitably for a day without aid from outside. The feat is impossible for most children. How well I remember my own childish miseries on holidays because I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do! On the haphazard plan your picnic will go uproariously for a time, but it will soon "fray out" into a tangle of ennui and quarrels.

In this brief chapter, then, I want to suggest merely one out of many schemes for a profitable picnic. It will include in the day's plans all ages and cla.s.ses, and afford pleasure for mind and spirit as well as body.

In the first place, arrange with great care a programme of contests.

If it is a joint picnic, some of the contests will be between representatives of the Sunday-schools that take part; otherwise, between cla.s.ses and individuals of the one Sunday-school. Bring in the girls as well as the boys, and the men and women as well as the children. Running, sack-races, three-legged races, pole and rope climbing, boat-races, croquet and tennis matches, base-ball (a game among the old men will cause much amus.e.m.e.nt), the marching of competing companies, broom or flag drills for the girls, leaping, slow races on the bicycle, throwing the hammer, soap-bubble contests--why, the number of these sports is legion.

Just a few hints:--

Give no prizes, but "honorable mention."

Let the contests be well planned and advertised beforehand, and set the scholars to training for them.

Give every one a printed programme (which may be worked off on a manifolder), and so arrange it that the entire company, if possible, may be spectators of each contest.

Make everything as short and snappy as you can.

Throughout the programme, work in all cla.s.ses and ages as best you may. Don't, for instance, put all the contests in which the little ones engage in the same part of the day.

In the second place, arrange a literary and religious programme that shall give a spiritual application to all these physical contests.

Organize a Sunday-school choir, which, after careful previous practice, will sing some of the many songs that treat the Christian life as a race, or a wrestling, or a battle. Some of the Bible pa.s.sages of similar tenor should be recited. Poems may be repeated bearing the same lesson. And the brightest of the scholars and teachers, of course not omitting your pastor, will give some very brief little essays or talks along this same line. This part of the day's programme may fitly be placed just after lunch, when in the heat of the day the athletes will wish to rest, and when all will be ready to sit down and listen.

Much will depend on the master of ceremonies for the day. Let him be the jolliest man you can find, but withal a man of deep consecration, who can make all feel that, whether they eat or drink, or play games, or whatever they do, they must do all for the glory of G.o.d. In this spirit alone can you hope to have a profitable picnic.

Chapter x.x.xVII

A Singing Sunday-School

Lifeless singing means, usually, a dead Sunday-school. Many a superintendent might greatly increase the vigor of his school by getting a little snap into the music. Different ways of singing will not of themselves solve the problem, but they will go far toward it.

Here are a few methods which will add to the singing the variety that is the spice of it as well as of nearly everything else.

Try reading the song in concert before it is sung. It would puzzle most even of us older folks to tell, after we have sung a hymn, what is in it. Concert reading brings out unsuspected beauties of thought, and the hymn will be sung afterward with fresh zest and with fuller intelligence. The superintendent may vary this plan by reading the stanzas alternately with the school, or the girls may alternate with the boys. Occasionally get a single scholar to read the hymn before the school, or, what is far better, to commit it to memory and recite it.

Indeed, memory hymns, to be committed to memory by the entire school, and sung without the book, will prove very popular. Select songs that are worth learning for their words as well as for their music,--a thing which, alas! cannot be said of all our Sunday-school songs. One memory hymn a month might possibly be achieved, and your children will rapidly grow independent of hymn-books, as their grandsires were.

They may like to vote upon a school hymn for the entire year, and learn it in this way,--one that shall serve as a sort of rallying song throughout the twelvemonth. The various cla.s.ses, too, may be encouraged to select their own cla.s.s songs, and to practise them at their cla.s.s socials. Then, once in a while, the entire school may listen while one or two cla.s.ses sing their cla.s.s hymns.

It would do no harm, either, for the superintendent occasionally to bind the children's interest to the singing by asking them to call for their favorites, that the school may sing them. This privilege may be granted to the cla.s.ses or scholars that have the best record in attendance.

It will add interest to the singing if bits of pleasant information are sometimes given about the authors of our familiar songs. At the opening of the session, for instance, tell something about the blind hymn-writer, f.a.n.n.y Crosby, and then let all the songs sung that day be by her; or tell a little about Miss Havergal's beautiful life, or give a few bright anecdotes about Dr. S. F. Smith, and then use nothing but their hymns. Some such book as Hezekiah b.u.t.terworth's "Story of the Hymns" (New York: The American Tract Society. $1.75), or Duffield's "English Hymns: Their Authors and History" (New York: The Funk & Wagnalls Co. $3), will afford a plentiful supply of biographical material. Once in a while get one of the scholars to read one of these hymn anecdotes, or to tell it in his own words.

Prayer songs--there are many most beautiful ones--may be used as prayers, all heads being bowed while they are sung softly; or they may be read in the same way.

Antiphonal songs are easily arranged. Choose two cla.s.ses of good singers in distant parts of the room, and let one sing the verses and the other the chorus of some suitable song. A hymn arranged in the form of question and answer, such as "Watchman, tell us of the night,"

or "Art thou weary, art thou languid?" is very effective when sung in this way, or when read in dialogue, the superintendent taking the questions and the school the answers.

Other dispositions may be made, for the sake of variety. Get the girls to sing the stanzas, and the boys the choruses, or the girls to sing one verse, and the boys the next, all uniting on the choruses; or, let the school to the right of the center alternate in singing with the school to the left. Send a company of singers into another room, with closed doors, and have them sing the chorus as an echo, very softly.

Get the teachers to sing the stanzas of some song, while the whole school sings the refrain.

Solos are good once in a while, especially if you make the school the chorus for them. A quartette of picked singers may be introduced very delightfully on occasion, especially if their selection is germane to the lesson topic, and, best of all, if the quartette is chosen from the scholars themselves. The primary department will hugely enjoy singing one of their songs to the main school, and the older scholars will enjoy it quite as heartily.

Possibly a Sunday-school choir might be organized to advantage, the strong singers from among the more mature scholars being banded together to practice new music and lead the singing. School orchestras have been very useful in many churches, the boys being proud to serve the school with violin and cornet.

Most useful, however, in adding zest to the singing, are the simple changes and variations that shrewdly call attention to the old by putting it in a new place, or "putting it" in a new way. For instance, you might call fresh attention to a beautiful song by bidding all sing it without their books, while you "line it out" earnestly and brightly.

You might preface a hymn with a sentence or two telling why you think it just the hymn to sing in connection with the day's lesson. You might piece together several verses from different songs, and ask the school to sing them in immediate succession, without prelude or interlude, noting the connection and progress of the thought. You might stimulate the scholars in this and that corner by asking now one cla.s.s and now another to consider themselves the leaders in the song next to be sung.

You might have occasional "new-hymn" days, in which will be sung no song ever tried by the school. You might even steal ten minutes, on very rare occasions, for song services, carefully planned so as to bear effectively on the lesson for the day. The ways are almost endless whereby a music-loving, child-loving superintendent can introduce his two loves to each other.

A few more general suggestions. First, to the organist or pianist. Why do you think it necessary to hammer out an entire piece of music before you let the fidgety children sing it? They already know every note of it, and are not interested in your performance; nor is any one else. They can find the place quite as quickly as you can. Except in the case of new songs, do let us off with the chord, and we'll canonize you as a model of self-restraint and good sense.

Then to the precentor, or whoever is responsible for the time you keep. Why is it so slow? I never could see why hymns should be sung so drawlingly as to make it quite impossible to grasp their thought. Time yourself in singing your next hymn, then read aloud the same hymn, forcing yourself to occupy the same time, and you will see why it is that our singing leaves our minds quite absolute blanks. This grievous fault must be remedied with the children if the singing of hymns is ever to be, to the average grown-up, an intellectual and spiritual as well as a physical occupation.

And, to the same end, why is it that your school can sing readily, even without the book, the first two or three stanzas of so many songs, while every stanza beyond is an unknown land to them? It is because, owing chiefly to the slowness of our ordinary singing, we seldom compa.s.s the whole of a hymn. At the close of a well-written hymn is the climax, the thought up to which the whole has led, which binds it all together. Our songs, if they are to get hold upon our minds and lives, must be sung beyond their prelude, sung straight through.

_To get hold of minds and lives_,--that must be the end sought by all our singing.

Chapter x.x.xVIII

A Praying Sunday-School

In no way can more Christianity be taught in less time than by a good prayer. A Sunday-school that is not opened with the right kind of prayer remains tight shut until the teachers get hold of it, while the right kind of prayer at the close of the lesson hour rivets the lesson on the week to come.

Yet I know of no point in Sunday-school management regarding which superintendents are more careless. The children must listen to Magellan prayers that circ.u.mnavigate the globe; to mechanical prayers, cast in stereotyped forms; to officious prayers that volunteer to teach the coming lesson; to peac.o.c.k prayers that flaunt big words and fine phrases; to wrinkled prayers, dealing with experiences into which the children will not grow for three decades. In some schools the superintendent always makes the prayer himself, praying in the same terms and tones and order for the same things. Elsewhere the superintendent invites others to perform this service, but, with pitiless impartiality, calls upon all that will, heedless whether they are capable or totally unfit for the difficult duty.

For it is not easy to guide the devotions of these varied ages and characters. The words must be so simple that the youngest can understand them. The thoughts must be so n.o.ble as to furnish an uplift to the oldest. The expressions must be direct, as in the realized presence of Christ. The prayer must be brief, and bright, and deeply in earnest, sincere as a child.

To perform this task, therefore, no one should be invited merely for policy's sake, merely because he is a visiting clergyman, a church officer, or a good-hearted layman. Ask no one that does not know the glorious language of a child's prayer. Give notice beforehand, since this prayer, if any, should be thought over and prayed over. And if you fear the prayer will lack a certain quality, shrewdly incorporate its name in your invitation, asking for a brief prayer, or a simple prayer, or a prayer about few things.