Around the Council Fire
Our conventions are the grand council fires in the war the
Sunday-school is waging against the forces of evil. The flame of the
Holy Spirit should blaze in their midst. With military directness they
should go straight to the immediate needs, find out what they are,
plan the campaign. Orderly and in turn, all should have a part in
them, not only the speakers, but the audience, one school and every
school. With hearts uplifted, with zeal on fire, every teacher should
leave the gathering bent on more valiant service.
Only a well-planned convention can effect this,--a convention long
thought over and prayed over, not merely by one man, but by many.
These meetings not seldom remind one of a house of which the owner
takes possession prematurely. Over yonder the scaffolding is still up,
here they are just removing it, the sound of the hammer and the saw is
everywhere, and the smell of wet plaster is in the air. Thus in many
conventions. Here and there the president bustles around, over the
platform, through the audience. The local committee of arrangements
are like bees before swarming. We begin late and with apologies; so we
continue.
The model convention, however, began at least as far back as the
preceding convention. At that gathering suggestions for the next
meeting were called for and obtained. During the following weeks the
president visited or corresponded with every school in the district,
trying to discover its excellences and lacks, that the convention
might exhibit the one and supply the other. Indeed, at the very
opening of the preceding convention the new officers, if any, were
elected, that during the sessions they might have ears open and brains
and tongues active, gathering hints for the profitable meeting they
were to plan. Therefore it was early known precisely what the coming
convention was to teach, and that convention, instead of bumping along
Haphazard Lane, rolls smoothly over Purpose Avenue.
Two methods will promote this preparedness of the audience, without
which the best-prepared programme largely fails: there should be a
convention press committee, whose pleasant task it is to pack the papers
with appetizing details of the coming meetings; and every school should
be supplied, at least two weeks beforehand, with a large number of the
printed programmes. If these are attractively got up, if the topics meet
genuine needs and are expressed brightly, suggestively, and not as Dr.
Dryasdust would formulate them, and if the various superintendents and
pastors advertise the convention wisely, the audience that will come
together will be ready for its work.
So large a part of most Sunday-school convention audiences comes from
the immediate locality that especial effort should be made to interest
beforehand the church and the town in which the meetings are held; and
this not merely for the sake of the convention, but for the quickening
of Sunday-school interests throughout the community. But if only a few
persons are gathered, do not make the mistake of losing them in a
large room, with scores of empty pews into which their zeal can creep
away and hide itself. The same coals that grow black in all outdoors
will make a little stove red-hot.
No small part of the preparation that is to make a success of your
convention is the careful and _enterprising_ selection of speakers. The
best policy is to choose none from "policy." Select the men that can
inspire and instruct, though you must crowd out some pastor of a big
church or some man with a big name. From the teachers themselves call
out suggestions as to speakers as well as to topics. Search through your
district for original workers, inventors, plummet men, women that win
the hearts of the children, and get them to tell the convention how they
do it. By all means call in the successful Christian teacher in the
secular schools. If possible, import a skilled worker from outside your
district. Fresh air will come in with him, the sense of a wider outlook.
Only, he must not be an opinionated egotist, one of those _ex-cathedra_
men, but a warm-hearted brother in the Lord; and it is far better to use
him in several short speeches scattered over the programme than in one
long address.
The wise choice of topics is quite as important as a wise choice of
men to treat them. Let all programme-makers remember what the
convention is to do: not to show off leaders, or to raise money, or to
get acquainted, or to have a good time, but to learn more about
teaching and managing Sunday-schools. Three aims must be set before
every Sunday-school convention: to arouse new love for the Bible, to
arouse new love for souls, to arouse new zeal for bringing these two
together. Every convention, then, should divide its time among three
classes of topics: the Bible, the children, the teaching.
1. _The Bible._ Such themes as these are suggested: "How the Bible
differs from all other books." "Recent Bible discoveries." "My way of
studying the Bible." "Bible-marking." "How to study Exodus." "The use
of a 'teacher's Bible.'" "Interleaved Bibles,--why and how." "The
value of the Victoria revision." "The study of the Bible as
literature." "What is the best commentary?" "Reading the Bible in
course,--how to make it most profitable." "The Septuagint and its
importance." "How the Bible came down to the printing-press." "The
story of our English Bible."
2. _The Children._ "Imagination in children." "Reasoning processes
that a child will not appreciate." "Why children love stories."
"Important differences between the child's mind and ours." "Put
yourself in his place." "A child's confidence: how lost; how won."
"Prigs: how not to make them." "The self-conscious child and how to
treat him." "Lessons from the playground." "Kindergarten principles of
value in the Sunday-school."
3. _The Two Brought Together._ "What is a good question?" "How to get
the class to ask questions." "A class that keeps its own order."
"Getting young people in love with the Bible." "The teacher's voice."
"Their own Bibles." "The quarterly left at home." "How to make the
Bible real to the children." "Some tests our teaching should stand."
This outline does not omit the school management, and occasional
discussion of the work of superintendents and other officers will
belong under the last head; but the teachers are so many compared with
the officers that _their_ work should be treated the more generously.
I think most convention programmes deal far too much with the
machinery of the work, any way.
The best mode of helping the officers is by an officers' conference;
and if the convention holds but two sessions, I would urge that one of
them be broken up into conferences. In one room the primary workers
may meet; in another, the superintendents and their assistants; in
others, the librarians, the secretaries, the choristers, the teachers
of intermediate classes, the teachers of adult classes, the heads of
home departments, the pastors. Programmes for these conferences
should be arranged with as much care as for the main convention, and
nothing should be done at random. It is a good plan, at the opening of
these little simultaneous gatherings, to appoint one member of each to
take notes of the best things and report them succinctly to the entire
body when it reassembles.
There are three classes of topics that I especially delight to see on a
convention programme. First, the fundamentals. We must not forget the
host of new workers constantly coming into our ranks. "How to ask a
question" is an old, old theme; but there are enough new teachers to
keep it forever fresh and pertinent. Second, new methods, exploited by
authorities, by practical workers. Third, what I call "encouragements,"
topics that inspire, cheer, comfort, victories gained, rewards in sight.
Hallelujah themes.
To these I must add a fourth: work for the audience. I would give the
listeners a chance to "talk back" about once every hour, and something
to do, besides listening, every half-hour. Question-boxes on practical
topics are incomparable interest-quickeners. An answer-box is a reversed
question-box. It contains written answers by the teachers, two or three
questions of wide scope and great importance being propounded on the
programme; such questions as: "What do you do with pert children?" "How
do you get your scholars to study their lessons?" A wise leader, with
the grace of conciseness, is required for both these exercises.
Yes, and he is needed for the "open parliaments," or conversational
discussions of helpful topics by brisk dialogue between audience and
platform. These may be made merely parade-grounds for "smart" leaders,
or genuine experience meetings, true council fires. It is wise to send
a special invitation to your best teachers, asking them to be prepared
with suggestions or questions for the open parliament, that it may
start off with momentum already obtained. A summarist, too, is a good
appointment; he listens quietly to the open parliament, and at the
close gathers up, in a few sentences that stick, whatever is best
worth preserving out of the discussion.
The open parliament most commonly held consists merely of dry and
formal reports from each school, the roll being called. If such an
exercise is held, place in charge of it a man thoroughly familiar with
the schools, and able by brisk questioning to elicit a report that
will picture the one school and stimulate the others.
A good presiding officer is half a convention. His first duty is to
have a distinct understanding with each speaker that he is not to
trespass on the next man's time, and his second duty is to cry "Stop,
thief!" if the speakers do so trespass. The convention management
should be a model for the Sunday-schools in every way, and in none
more imperatively than in this of promptness.
But also as to order. Oh, the weak-kneed or the purblind presidents,
that allow the talking, whispering, walking about of a few to filch
from the many half the value of the meetings! Stop the speaker. Call a
halt on the entire convention. Don't proceed another step till quiet
is restored, and maintained. Be a platform czar, and your audience
will be your happy serfs.
Then, the president is master of ceremonies. So much in
acquaintanceships depends on tactful introductions! He should deliver to
each successive speaker an audience that is in a glow of anticipation,
and when the speaker is done,--yes, and all through,--his own cordial
hands should lead the hearty applause, and he should take time for an
appreciative word before passing to the next topic.
If the presiding officer is to do all this, he must plan beforehand
almost every sentence he will use in introducing speakers or opening the
discussions. He is to be suggestive; he is to set brains a-throbbing
with eagerness and tongues aching with things to say; and he is to do it
all in twenty words. Brevity, good humor, suggestiveness,--these, in
this order, are the chairman's prime virtues.
At the opening of every convention the key-note of formality, routine,
and perfunctoriness is struck in the address of welcome and the
response. Their every word could safely be predicted in advance. The
world is waiting for a programme committee that will be courageous
enough to leave them out. If the pastor of the entertaining church has
helpful ideas on Sunday-school work, by all means place him on the
programme somewhere; but don't make a rut of him.
At the very outset strike the key of prayer. Insert here and there
throughout the programme a quiet ten minutes with the great Teacher.
By all means close with a devotional half-hour--not a hasty prayer
punctuated with the snapping of watches. Sentence prayers by scores,
prayer psalms softly repeated, prayer hymns read with bowed
heads,--the convention should furnish an inspiration and model for the
devotions of all the schools represented.
Scarcely less important is the element of song. Unconsciously to
themselves, the audience should become a normal training-class,
learning how to conduct the singing of their schools in fresh and
uplifting ways. Many, if not all of the methods mentioned in my
chapter on this theme find fit application to the convention.
The social features deserve careful attention. Set the teachers to
talking together; conversation was Socrates' university. One of the most
helpful events may be a light supper given by the entertaining church. A
small fee is charged, all sit down together, and at the close a series
of happy speeches will bring out flashes of wit and bushels of sense.
The business should be kept under. Introduce it a little at a time,
rather than spend a fatiguing hour and a half. Make no parade of
money-raising. Giving should be done quietly. Teach your teachers the
grace of envelopes. Reduce all business to a minimum, remembering that
the convention comes together not for legislation, but for inspiration.
The Sunday-school convention is not only a conference, but an
exposition. Here should be gathered whatever new teaching apparatus
any school has bought: wall-maps, sand-maps, relief-maps, material for
object-lessons, portable blackboards, colored pictures illustrating
the lessons, specimens of class tests, library catalogues, new kinds
of class-books, collection-envelopes, singing-books, new editions of
the Bible, lesson helps of all kinds,--it is clear how varied and
valuable a collection may easily be brought together when once the
teachers and officers understand what is wanted.
The library of the entertaining school should be open for visiting
librarians to examine books and methods. The best new books might be
brought in from all the libraries of the district, and if each school
sent only one or two, the entire exhibit would furnish many a
suggestion to wide-awake library committees.
One of the most important exhibits is a Sunday-school map of the
district, indicating where schools are in existence, and also where
schools might and should be placed.
There is one kind of exhibit that should rarely be made, if ever: an
exhibit of the children themselves, either to "speak pieces" or to
play Sunday-school and be taught. The latter use of them has
advantages, but, to my mind, the gain to the audience is nothing
compared to the children's increase of self-consciousness. I hide my
head whenever I think of such a mock recitation in which I figured
when a little boy, and remember how proud I was of my pert forwardness
in answering all of the questions; before all those people, too!
In closing, let us ask how the convention results may be gathered up,
preserved, and sown broadcast. A notebook should be in the hand of
each attendant,--either given away or sold. The speakers should so
mark their points and emphasize the subdivisions of their addresses
that the thoughts can readily be grasped and retained. A printed
syllabus is a great assistance to this end, and if the printing-press
is too costly, a manifolder may be used. Blank pages should be left in
the programme, to invite to note-taking.
And then, the new plans all jotted down, the felicitous expressions
written out _verbatim_, the facts and figures clearly noted, let the
convention be widely reported. Not merely should the convention press
committee, that heralded the gathering through the papers, continue
their labors long enough to render their previous work most fruitful,
but every teacher present should carry the convention's best to his
teachers' meeting and his class; yes, and to the church prayer-meeting.
Thus will the ardor of the council fire spread throughout the army.