The Boy and the Sunday School A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday School with Teen Age Boys — Reading Companion

Division was the next to receive attention, until today its manly strength and power are the admiration of the Church.

Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the middle division, called the Secondary, and covering the "Teen Age," has been sadly neglected--the joint in the harness of our Sunday school fabric. Here we have met with many a signal defeat, for the doors of our Sunday schools have seemed to swing outward and the boys and girls have gone from us, many of them never to return. We have busied ourselves to such an extent in studying the problem of the boy and the girl that the real problem--the problem of leadership--has been overlooked.

The Secondary Division is the challenge of the Sunday school and of the Church today. It is during the "Teen Age" that more decisions are made _for_ Christ and _against_ him than in any other period of life. It is here that Sunday school workers have found their greatest difficulty in meeting the issue, largely because they have not understood the material with which they have to deal.

We are rejoiced, however, to know that the Secondary Division is now coming to be better understood and recognized as the firing line of the Sunday school.

What has been needed and is now being supplied is authoritative literature concerning this critical period. Indeed, the Sunday school literature for the Secondary Division is probably appearing more rapidly now than that for any other division of the school.

This book is a choice contribution to that literature. It comes from a man who has devoted his life to the boys and girls, and who is probably the highest authority in our country in this Department. The largest contribution he is making to the advancement of the whole Sunday school work is in showing the fascination, as well as the possibilities, of the Secondary Division. We are sure this little book will bring rich returns to the Sunday schools, because of the large number who will be influenced, through reading its pages, to devote their lives to the bright boys and fair girls in whom is the hope, not only of the Church, but of the World.

Chicago, June 1, 1913.

I The Home and the Boy 23

II The Public School and the Boy 32

III The Church and the Boy 37

IV The Sunday School or Church School 41

V The Boy and the Sunday School 48

VI Fundamental Principles in Sunday School Work with Boys 57

VII Method and Organization 62

VIII The Organized Sunday School Bible Class 74

IX Bible Study for Boys 93

X Through-the-Week Activities for Boys' Organized Classes 104

XI The Boys' Department in the Sunday School 120

XII Inter-Sunday School Effort for Boys 135

XIII The Older Boys' Conference or Congress 138

XIV The Secondary Division or Teen Age Boys' Crusade 158

XV Sex Education for Boys and the Sunday School 176

XVI The Teen Boy and Missions 193

XVII Temperance and the Teen Age 202

XVIII Building up the Boy's Spiritual Life 208

XIX The Teen Age Teacher 215

XXI The Rural Sunday School 268

XXII The Relation of the Sunday School to Community Organizations 277

A great deal of material has come from the pens of various writers on boy life in the last few years. Quite a little, also, has been written about the Sunday school, and a few attempts have been made to hitch the boy of the teen years and the Sunday school together. Most of these attempts, however, have been far from successful; due, in part, to lack of knowledge of the boy on the one hand, or of the Sunday school on the other. Generous criticism of the Sunday school has been made by experts on boy life, but this generally has been nullified by the fact that the critics have had no adequate touch with the Sunday school or its problems--their bread-and-butter experience lay in another field.

"The Men and Religion Forward Movement," in its continent-wide work, discovered not a few of the problems of the Sunday school, and attempted a partial solution in the volume on boys' work in the "Messages" of the Movement. It was but partial, however, first, because the volume tried to deal with the boy, the church and the community all together, and second, because it failed to take into account the fact that there are two sexes in the church school and that the boy, however important, constitutes but a section of the Sunday school and its problems.