The junior church in action

Front matter

* * IN ACTION * *

WELDON F. CROSSLAND

CppyrigTit N°^_

Introduction

BY

Bishop Theodore S. Henderson

It is oft repeated that the children of the church are the church of to-morrow. There is no way to save the manhood of the world except to save the boyhood of the world. It is folly supreme to plan on saving the womanhood of the world if we neglect the girlhood of the world. When we save an adult, we are likely to save a unit; when we save a child, we save a multiplication table. There will be no church to-morrow if there is no religion of childhood to-day.

What is told in this volume is a definite contribution toward building the church of to-morrow by building the childhood of to-day into the church. There is a vast difference between baiting a crowd and building a church. There is a long spiritual difference between assembling a congregation and building a church. There is a tremendous Kingdom difference between erecting a building and building a church. A church is more than brick and mortar, more than stone and shingles, more than nails and paint, more than window glass and furniture. One may build all this material into a church building without building a church. A church is a group of folks who live and labor as a family circle of which God is a real father; in which each behaves like a child of God, and treats all the other members of the circle as members

vii viii INTRODUCTION

of God's family. From such a circle it is a Kingdom crime to exclude the boys and girls. In the privileges and duties of such a circle, boys and girls ought to be trained with rare skill and real spirituality.

Such is the ideal of this book. Its suggestions have been tested in the laboratory of boy and girl life. It does not dream unreal dreams; it records actual experience. The author is a spiritual scientist. He has put these chapters into the test tube of the Junior Church with the results herein stated. He is at this writing erecting a new church building ; he is doing more : he is building a church by building the boys and girls into the family life of God. There is no substitute for the church in the life of the boy or girl. Neither boys' or girls' clubs, nor Sunday Schools, nor any other ecclesiastical or social creature should separate boys and girls from the family life of God expressed in the church. The practice of the principles of this book will help in a vital fashion to build the church of to-morrow.

Theodore S. Henderson.

Detroit, Michigan.

Preface

This book is based on three years' experience with the Junior Church of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church of Detroit. As in Central, so in scores of churches in America the Junior Church has served the religious needs of the boys and girls of the church with unusual success.

Although many excellent publications have already appeared, devoted to Bible stories and other inspirational themes, none of them have dealt at all extensively with the Junior Church as an organization for Christian worship and service among boys and girls. So many pastors of various denominations have asked about the purpose and methods of the Junior Church that the present volume was prepared to tell of the excellent work the Junior Churches are doing.

Much of the material of this publication was secured through the liberal response to the two hundred questionnaires that were sent to as many of the leading pastors of the country. Every plan and method cited has been tried by some Junior Church and has been found to be successful.

To Bishop H. Lester Smith, formerly pastor of Central Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit, now of the Bangalore Area, India, is due much credit for constructive criticism in the reading of the manuscript.

W. F. C.

Ninde Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit, Michigan.

Chapter Ii: How To Start A Junior Church 22

Laying the Plans. — Announcing the First Service. — Launching the Plans. — Who Will Have Charge of the Junior Church? — Can Every Church Have a Junior Church? — The Time of the Service.

CHAPTER III: THE JUNIOR CHURCH SERVICE . . 29 The Order of Service. — The Boys and Girls Participating in the Service. — The Music — Special Features. — Memory Work. — The Devotional Attitude. — The Order During the Service.

Chapter Iv: The Sermonets 35

Is It Easy to Talk to Boys and Girls? — The Range of Sermonet Subjects. — How to Illustrate the Sermonets. — The Language of the Sermonets. — The Length and the Presentation.

Chapter V: One Hundred And Eleven Sermonet Subjects 40

General Inspirational. — The Old Testament. — The New Testament. — Church History. — Church Doctrine.

Chapter Vi: The Junior Church Organiza- Tion 46

Should Be Along Denominational Lines. — The Board of Trustees and the Board of Stewards. — The Standing Committees. — The Societies. — The Ushers. — The Finances. — Other Features.

CHAPTER VII: THE JUNIOR CHURCH ACTIVITIES . 53 The Expression of the Boy's and Girl's Religious Life. — The Life Service Opportunity. — Attendance and Mem-

XI 1

CONTENTS bership Contests. — Ways of Serving the Church and the Community. — Work for Home and Foreign Missions. — The Junior Jolly and Other Social Affairs.

Part Two .TWENTY SERMONETS DELIVERED BEFORE THE

CENTRAL METHODIST EPISCOPAL JUNIOR

PAGE

I Good Roads m . 63

II If I Had a Million Dollars . . ., .. .... 67

III Keep to the Right 71

IV A Good Start 74

V Do You Own Your Face? 78

VI The Laughter of Jesus 81

VII How Great God Is 84

VIII Soldiers of the King 87

IX Measuring Folks .,.,.... 00

XI Are You in Tune? : „ . . ., . 96

XII Be Strong 99

XIII A Book of Rules 102

XIV Listening to Voices 105

XV Building Air-Castles 108

XVI Be a Good Scout in

XVII Talking with God , ... 114

XVIII How to Catch Fish 118

XIX The Message of the Magnet ........ 121

Chapter I The Junior Church

The Junior Church is no longer a new thing in church work. Many ministers of many denominations now have it as an integral part of their church organization. Without exception they commend it enthusiastically. Scores of these junior congregations have sprung up in all parts of the country to meet a very real need, until to-day the movement has become one of increasing interest to church leaders.

Ranging in size from twenty-five to three hundred members, Junior Churches are to be found in churches of all sizes, — from one hundred and nineteen to twentyeight hundred members. Wherever the Junior Church idea has been fairly tried, it has met with excellent success, has increased the number of boys and girls attending the morning church service, and has afforded an unusually high type of training for them in the work of the church.

What is the Junior Church? It is a regular church service and organization for boys and girls, — one that seeks to train them in Christian worship and service. It serves their religious life in the same way that the regular church service does the religious life of the adults. Its chief features are

(a.) a regular order of service and organization that is as much like that of the denomination as is possible ;

(b.) a sermonet, sometimes two, on some great subject of the Gospel, the religious life or church history ;

(c.) a Junior Church choir, with a pianist, who is a junior, to lead in the junior congregational singing;

(d.) ushers, officials, offering, — in fact as complete an organization along denominational lines as the leader may think desirable.

The service is held at the hour of the regular morning worship. In many churches the boys and girls come to the regular church service for the inspiration and worship of the first part of the service, passing out during the hymn just before the sermon. In other churches the two services are separate and contemporaneous. Under the leadership of the assistant pastor, the deaconess or some competent person of the congregation, the Junior Church carries on its service and activities as does the regular church. When boys and girls reach a given age, — fourteen, fifteen or sixteen, they are expected to remain in the regular church service.

That boys and girls do not attend the morning church service in gratifying numbers is a fact that everyone admits and regrets. A look over any congregation will reveal this condition. Why are they not there? Here are just a few of the answers that many frank pastors give to this large question. Some of them are abrupt and extreme, but all of them have at least some grains of truth in them.

One New York pastor says, "There is little in the average service for them." "Parents do not wish to have their own worship and that of their friends disturbed by their children." "The relaxation of parental control, — parents do not insist on their children attending church as they formerly did." "The feeling among parents that the Sunday School is a sufficient substitute for church attendance, — one that meets most of the religious needs of the child." "The boys and girls are usually not considered when the church service and the sermon are being prepared." "Most of the average sermon is 'over their heads/ — for the most part meaningless to them." "If the church service were as uninteresting to adults as it is to children, there would be even fewer of them there."

Certainly the least we dare say is that the church service does not reach boys and girls in anything like the desired proportion.

That the Junior Church brings more boys and girls to the church service is strikingly demonstrated in the tabulated results of the replies to the two hundred questionnaires. The following chart speaks for itself.

These churches ranged in attendance among boys and girls from one out of two, in a church that had a Junior Church, to one out of thirty-seven in a church that had neither a Junior Church nor a sermonet.

The reasons for this increase are fairly evident. The boys and girls will attend church if they feel there is something there for them. They love the church and what it stands for in their lives, but their opinion of the church service is often not especially flattering. And church leaders must reckon with that opinion, one-sided as it sometimes is. Unless the prevalent idea among boys and girls that the church service is 'dry' is corrected, that opinion will still obtain as it so often has, when they grow old enough to attend the regular service.

(2) (3)

In In

Churches, Where a Churches That Sermonet for Boys Have Neither the and Girls Is Given Junior Church Servat the Regular Serv- ice nor the Sermonet, ice,

(i) In Churches Having a Junior Church Service,

D

One out of Seven One out of Eleven One out of Twen-

persons in the con- persons in the con- ty-one persons in the

gregation were boys gregation were boys congregation were

and girls under six- and girls under six- boys and girls under

teen years of age. teen years of age. sixteen years of age.

When they know that there is a service of their own, one that they can follow and understand all the way through, or when the preacher speaks to them specially for a short time, they do attend more regularly and in greater numbers. In one of the smaller churches, the minister's wife, who has charge of the Junior Church preaches to a larger congregation each Sunday than does her husband.

The attendance of boys and girls at the church service can be secured, if sought for in a reasonable way.

That the Junior Church develops the church-going habit among boys and girls and binds them more intimately and permanently to the church has been the experience of practically all those preachers who have Junior Churches. "They become accustomed to the spirit and the mode of worship and are much better prepared to become members of the main congregation when they are a little older," said Dr. Lucius H. Bugbee of Christ Church, Pittsburg. Rev. J. Randolph Sasnett, Associate Pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington, says, "Yes, we find that the Junior Church forms the church-going habit because it keeps them related to the church just at a time when so many drift away from the Kingdom."

"They feel that it is their own service," said Bishop H. Lester Smith, while pastor of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit. "These boys and girls become just as loyal to their own Junior Church as the most loyal members of the adult congregation are to theirs."

The Junior Church also develops the devotional side of the boy's and girl's religious nature, because its service is adapted to the religious and devotional needs. It is the graded public school idea applied to the church service. No educator would think of putting a boy of ten in a class of graduates at the university. Yet religious educators have sometimes come suspiciously near placing a kindergartner in the same service with the saintly, grayhaired Christian, whose long life of worship and service gives him a totally different religious background from that which the boy or girl possesses.

The pure life of a child thrives on quite different spiritual food from that which the more mature life needs, and it requires that this nourishment be prepared and presented in quite a different way. To get the best results in Christian character and life, the boy or girl should have religious food that he or she can digest.

The Junior Church gives opportunity for the expression of this devotional spirit in a way that is perfectly natural. To see twelve-year-old boys and girls offering the morning prayer, leading in the reading of the psalter or the scripture lesson, making the announcements, or giving minute-man speeches on missionary subjects is a sight that means much for the church of to-morrow. Boys and girls are interested, as are adults, in that in which they participate. Just as the Junior League, the Junior Missionary Societies, the departmentalized Sunday School and the graded public school meet the educational needs of boys and girls by adapting the subject matter and the method of presentation to those needs, just so the Junior Church performs a similar service for them in their church worship.

Not least among the advantages of the Junior Church is the training in Christian service which it affords. This training is not of a scattering and promiscuous nature, but is directly along the lines of definite church work. At a time when the instinct for organization is rapidly developing in boys and girls, their activities in the Junior Church service and organization teach them the ways of the church in which they will soon take their places. "I'm a member of the Junior Church Official Board," one youthful enthusiast told her mother.

As a training ground for effective, devoted members of the Christian Church of the future, the Junior Church has not an equal.

One of the by-products of the Junior Church, gratifying both to the pulpit and the pew, is that more parents are brought into the church. Every minister, more often than is pleasing, has heard the very real objection from mothers, "I would just love to come to church, and I do miss it so much, but I have no place to leave the children. They are so mischievous that I feel humiliated when they disturb others during the sermon." Although frequently an excuse, this is doubtless one of the prevalent causes for the absence of many parents from church. The Junior Church is not and never should be a nursery or a kindergarten, — a mere place where children may be left. The nursery for the babies and the kindergarten for the tiny kiddies are no more a part of the Junior Church than they are of the Sunday School.

Parents are just human enough to want to listen uninterruptedly to the sermon, and those of the congregation who have no children are fully as human. Many of the churches having Junior Church services state that parents with children have frequently been brought back to regular church attendance because of a convenient and profitable place where their children may go during the service. And many cases have been noted where the interest of the boy or girl in the Junior Church has brought the parents to the regular service and into the church. The surest way to the heart of every parent is through the boy or the girl.

The Junior Church is constantly and rapidly growing in favor and usefulness throughout the country. The following chapters will indicate the way to start a Junior Church, the service, the organization and the activities to the many who have been enquiring regarding these phases of the Junior Church work.

Chapter II How To Start A Junior Church

"How shall we start a Junior Church?" and "Where shall we begin?" are questions that arise immediately. The methods outlined have been chosen from among those which many Junior Churches have found to be most successful. From the plans of this chapter any pastor or worker can secure enough material to launch satisfactorily a junior service and organization.

1. The whole Junior Church idea should be thought through thoroughly, and all plans carefully laid before any announcement is made. The place and the time of holding the service, the leadership, the order of service, and other items that will suggest themselves must be settled upon beforehand, if the greatest smoothness and success are to be attained.

2. Many pastors have found that to give a five-minute sermonet at each morning service for perhaps a month or more before the first junior service popularizes the plan among the parents and secures their cooperation. The training of the person selected for the leadership of the junior congregation is not least among the advantages of such an arrangement.

3. General announcement of the first service should be made two weeks before it opens, and special announcement on the Sunday preceding the first service, in the Sunday School, the church services, and in the Junior League.

HOW TO START A JUNIOR CHURCH 23

Enlist the interest of the Sunday School teachers, asking them to announce it in their classes.

4. An attractive poster placed in the vestibule of the church will attract many.

5. During the week before the first service, postcards should be sent to all boys and girls in the congregation or Sunday School, inviting them to the first service. One or two dollars invested here will bring the most liberal returns. The receipt of a postcard or letter is an important event in the life of a boy or girl, and the sender shall in no wise lose his reward.

A return postcard form, which secured seventy-six replies from one hundred and two cards mailed, is as follows:

THE JUNIOR CHURCH, CENTRAL METHODIST CHURCH

Dear :

Next Sunday we start the Junior Church, an interesting church service for boys and girls. I need you to help make it a success. You will like the sermonets on subjects like, "If I Were a Millionaire/' and "How a Shepherd Boy Became King." Sometimes we will have lantern slides and pictures. Of course you will want to come and have the honor of being one of the charter or first members. Write your name on this return postal card at once, and drop it in the post office for me. I shall look forward to seeing you next Sunday at the regular church service. Our motto is "every boy and girl a member." Your good friend,

Weldon F. Crossland.

(On the message side of the self-addressed return postal was the following:)

Dear Mr. Crossland :

I wish that you would put my name on the roll of charter or first members of the Junior Church of Central Methodist Church.

I promise that I will attend just as often as I possibly can.

Your friend,

Name

Address

6. For each of the next four or five Sundays have some attractive feature planned, as for example any of the following:

(a.) The signing of the charter by all the boys and

the girls — a very impressive ceremony.

Form and ceremony appeal strongly to boys

and girls. (b.) The choosing of the choir, whether that be a

quartet, a sextet or an octet, (c.) The selection and consecration of the Official

Board. (d.) Announce the Junior Jolly for the following

Saturday — a lively social affair of the Junior

Church. (e.) The institution of the envelope system for offering. (f.) The appointment of the ushers for the offering

and for the distribution of the books.

HOW TO START A JUNIOR CHURCH 25

(g.) The awarding of a prize for the best essay brought on the subject of the previous Sunday's sermonet.

To say that the success or failure of the Junior Church depends on the leadership is not to overstate the situation. Is not the same true of any organization ? The best leader in the church is none too good for the junior congregation. There is an idea, as prevalent as it is erroneous, that almost any one will do to take charge of boys and girls. The truth of the matter, however, is that the talented person in this phase of public speaking is even more rare than the able speaker to adults.

The answer to the question, "Who lead the Junior Churches of the country?" shows that a suitable person to take charge of the Junior Church may be found in almost every church.

"One of my consecrated school teachers leads our Junior Church," says one pastor. Another replies, "A good and competent woman." "My wife. She has one or two of the most spiritual people to assist," says Rev. L. M. Blakeley of River Rouge Methodist Church, who has one of the most successful Junior Churches in the country. "The Associate Pastor," says another. "The Church House Director," "The Assistant Pastor," "The Deaconess," "My best Sunday School teacher," are among the many other replies.

A church member that loves boys and girls and is loved by them ; one who understands them and who talks interestingly to them ; one who has a real religious experience and a deep love for the church — such a one can make the Junior Church THE force in the religious life of the boys and girls of any church.

Can every church have a Junior Church? Yes, or something that will be the next best thing. The lack of a separate room is the only difficulty that should stand between any church and the Junior Church. The adequate leadership is there, and it is only a question of interesting and securing the right person.

The larger churches, those of more than several hundred members, may easily have a Junior Church that

-O BOX « « ~i ©

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^- a. = S-OrtS

S 1*1 Mil

BOYS AND GIRLS

Come and have a GOOD TIME with us at Central's

Junior Church

Every Sunday morning at 10:30

COME NEXT SUNDAY

Central Methodist Church

Two of these cards, carefully given to each member of the Junior Church on the promise that they will be given to two boys or girls with an invitation to attend, increased attendance sixty percent.

has an attendance of from seventy-five to three hundred. That proportion of boys and girls attend Sunday School. The problem is to secure their attendance at the Junior Church service — a problem that has been found to be very easy of solution by a great many churches. The Garland Street Methodist Junior Church, Flint, under the leadership of LeRoy Schnell, had an attendance of well over three hundred.

Many of the more enterprising Junior Churches have profitably divided the boys and girls who attend church

HOW TO START A JUNIOR CHURCH 27

into three groups, the Junior Church (boys and girls from six to fourteen or sixteen), the Kindergarten (ages three to five years) and the Nursery (all under two or three). The Kindergarten seeks to do for the very young boys and girls just what the Junior Church does for the older ones. The lessons are taught by means of the sandpile, scissor work and other kindergarten material. One enterprising Kindergarten supervisor sent several dozen very interesting scrap-books that her boys and girls had made to the soldiers at Camp Custer. While neither the kindergarten nor the nursery are a part of the Junior Church, they have performed real service to both churches and parents, as well as affording an avenue of activity for some of the older Junior Church girls.

Those churches which do not find it possible to maintain a Junior congregation will still find it possible to use the sermonets at the morning service. A five-minute talk entirely to boys and girls as they sit with their parents will stimulate attendance. Dr. G. F. Shepherd of Asbury Church, Watertown, N. Y., says, "My second hymn Sunday mornings is always for the children." The hundreds of pastors of all denominations who deliver short sermonets to the junior members of their congregations often find that the adults enjoy these short discourses equally with the boys and girls.

Practically all the Junior Churches are held at the hour of the regular morning worship. Between the two different times of holding the service, the minister wishing to start the Junior Church will of course choose for himself. In the former case, the boys and girls come into the regular service, stay for the hymns, the prayer, the Scripture reading, the offering and the anthem, passing out quietly to their own service during the singing of the hymn just before the sermon. This leaves thirtyfive or forty minutes for their service. According to the other arrangement, the two services are contemporaneous, the boys and girls going directly to their own service, which opens at the same hour as the regular church service.

The advantages claimed for the former type, which is perhaps the more prevalent, are : (i) It does not break up the family as a unit in Christian worship. (2) It leaves the boys and girls in the regular church service during that portion of the service from which they derive the greatest value — the hymns, the Bible reading, etc. (3) It ties the Junior Church to the regular church service, so that the transition from the Junior Church to the church service at the age of thirteen, fourteen or fifteen — in some churches later — is natural and easy. This plan is used in Central Church, Detroit.

The advantages claimed for the other type of service are: (1) The entire service is adapted to the religious and devotional needs and capacities of the boys and girls. (2) Much more time is afforded for doing the special training that is desired. (3) The boys and girls feel that it is really their own service. The Wesley Methodist Church, Detroit, and many others have found the latter service to be unusually successful.

Chapter III The Junior Church Service

Those Junior Church services have been most successful that have followed as closely as possible the spirit and the order of the regular church service. By all means the junior service should have the denominational tone, for better Presbyterians, better Methodists or better Baptists are better Christians. To have a marked similarity between the Junior service and the regular service makes much easier the step from the one into the other.

The elaborateness of the service will, of course, be determined by the length of the time at the leader's disposal. The following order of service, used by a number of the larger churches, with slight variations may be suggestive.

i. The Doxology. (All the members standing.)

2. Invocation or short prayer. (All remaining

standing.)

3. Hymn. (Led by the Junior Church Choir, a

member of the regular church choir conducting if one can be secured.)

4. Memory Work. (The Ten Commandments, or

the Beatitudes, or the Thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians, etc.)

5. Hymn.

6. Responsive Lesson. (Led by a boy or girl.)

7. Prayer, closing with the Lord's Prayer. (Led

either by the leader or by one or two boys or girls in voluntary prayers.)

8. The Scripture Lesson. (Occasionally read by

a boy or girl.)

9. The Announcements.

10. The Offering, with prayer either before or after

the offering is taken. Anthem or special music during the offering.

11. The First Sermonet. (Seven or eight minutes

long, on some Bible subject.)

12. A Hymn. (The congregation standing.)

NO SLACKERS IN OUR ICE BOX

During the month of July and August some churches have a vacation, but we, "The Junior Church of Garland Street," do not slack one bit; and we sure do get some busy. Everybody on their toes trying to get the young people out to our 9-week Chautauqua. A different speaker each Sunday. When people say if s too hot, this is what we tell them — Come to our ice box (the Junior church room) ; it's 3 feet in the ground and the coolest place in town. The refreshments we serve every Sunday morning are free. And the musical program — it's great ; our speakers bring a special message of interest to boys and girls.

Just watch for our program each Sunday and you'll know what's going on in the Biggest, Best and Busiest place for boys and girls in Flint — The Junior Church of Garland Street.

THE JUNIOR CHURCH SERVICE 31

13. The Second Sermonet. (Seven or eight minutes

long, on some general religious or inspirational topic. Missionary stories are always enthusiastically received. )

14. The Closing Hymn.