An eager Sunday School teacher sometimes makes a reluctant superintendent. From a distance administrative responsibilities can seem a poor exchange for the challenge and reward of teaching—until, that is, the special joys, opportunities, and unique perspective on church activity of the office unfold to the new superintendent. In a letter to the Superintendent and Teachers of The Mother Church Sunday School, our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, wrote, "It is a joy to know that they who are faithful over foundational trusts, such as the Christian education of the dear children, will reap the reward of rightness, rise in the scale of being, and realize at last their Master's promise, 'And they shall be all taught of God.'"1
Sunday School work is indeed foundational to the sturdy development of each young Christian Scientist, to the expanding movement of Christian Science throughout the world, and to branch church work. It is an integral part of the educational system of Christian Science, governed and protected by the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy. The vitality of each branch church, its ability to bless the neighborhood it serves, is thus directly related to the strength and prosperity of its Sunday School.
Our Leader's work as Founder of Christian Science takes on an extra dimension as the completeness and self-perpetuating nature of the educational system of the Church of Christ, Scientist, begins to appear. For what makes a school successful? Surely the results it brings out in the lives of its pupils. How does it achieve these results? Through what and how the pupils are taught; through the caliber and example of the teachers, their attitude toward their pupils.
In the Christian Science Sunday School the subject matter and basic teaching techniques are established concisely and comprehensively in just nineteen lines of the Church Manual (see Art. XX, Sects. 2 and 3). Fully to appreciate the completeness of these instructions, one needs perhaps to have been called upon to teach, without prior experience oneself as a Sunday School pupil and with no other teaching experience upon which to depend.
Teachers are drawn from the branch church membership. Their caliber, example, and attitude toward the pupils depend upon the sincerity with which these members are demonstrating their understanding of Christian Science, upon whether they are enlarging it by active study. Are they accepting the Manual provision for Primary class instruction? A superintendent may find it a vital part of his or her office to keep the importance and joy of Sunday School teaching constantly before the membership, so that individual members are eager to teach and executive boards are willing to release from other duties those members best qualified to meet the Sunday School's immediate requirements. He may find more members ready and waiting to teach if they are encouraged to read, in conjunction with Article XX of the Church Manual, The Christian Science Sunday School Handbook and other pertinent literature from the Christian Science Reading Room as part of their regular support work of their Sunday School.
When about to complete my three-year term of office as superintendent, I was asked without warning, "If you could give your successor just one piece of advice— what would it be?" The reply came spontaneously in one word: "Listen!" With time to consider, I stay with that one word. The superintendent can only work from his present understanding and the need of the moment. However inadequate he may initially feel, he can support his board by trusting them to have listened prayerfully and to have made the best available choice for present needs. Then, listening prayerfully in his turn, he will be shown just how to work, what to do, how and when to do it. "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."2
The first thing that had unfolded to me as I listened was the oneness of branch church and Sunday School in the superbly integrated process of our scientifically Christian education, and the need for this oneness to be valued by the membership if the church was to constitute an actively self-renewing teachers' training college for its Sunday School. As I listened further, I glimpsed the unity of church and Sunday School in their ability to meet the needs of the entire family. At a time when the family and its importance to the progress of society are undervalued, this developed capacity of each branch Church of Christ, Scientist, to embrace the whole family in its loving ministrations is of inestimable value.
Perhaps because earlier I had served as chairman of a committee whose specific concern was the immediate neighborhood of the city church to which I belong, I had held a somewhat geographical concept of the church area, even though—like most members—I lived some distance away. Now as I listened from the standpoint of superintendent, the church area took on a far wider connotation: I saw it comprised the daily contacts of the membership, wherever they lived, worked, or attended school. (Were it otherwise, indeed, membership in a city church could quickly shrink to a cozy club membership, with the members living and working quite unidentified as Christian Scientists.)
As they developed, I shared these thoughts, and teachers spoke of their work—problems and achievements— during time allowed early in each church year at a members' business meeting. In this way Sunday School work came into focus for every member, whatever his new assignment might be, and the oneness of our activity was established.
Members and pupils began to introduce more children to the Sunday School, and it was noticeable how these newcomers were encouraged not only by the continuing support of their teachers but by the sustained interest in their progress of those who first brought them. Their parents came to church, too. Like brooks to the river, children gravitate to where they feel valued, loved, and understood. Pupils readily bring along their friends if they themselves enjoy their Sunday School teaching, find they can use it, can borrow books, and are allowed to help actively in caring for their Sunday School.
We found that a number of small teacher-workshop meetings held at the very beginning of each church year helped new teachers to settle in quickly and confidently and to see the work of their particular class in relation to the whole Sunday School experience of each pupil. (These were in addition to the two full Sunday School meetings each year; to maintain the oneness of the work and to help them work closely with the teachers, the librarian, secretary, reserve teachers, ushers, and pianists were all included in at least one of these more intimate workshops.) A teacher really caring for the individual progress of the pupils—getting to know them and their friends, arranging suitable home assignments, encouraging them to learn by using their understanding during the week—such a teacher experiences many of the deepest joys of parenthood, only with a constantly changing, expanding family.
The superintendent's role is somewhat different. He cherishes the work of the Sunday School as a whole, supports teachers and workers, welcomes pupils, places visitors, reassures parents. He has a taste, in fact, of what might be described as sublimated grandparenthood: the loving care that is not interference, the maintaining of values and perspective, the encouragement of others to discover and prove their God-given ability, the sharing of their troubles and triumphs. Some very small children were recently recorded on the radio—discussing grandparents. "They always have time for you," confided one; and another added, "Grandparents are very young really. They only look a little old—sometimes— on the outside." Don't Sunday School superintendents meet these specifications, too? They always have time. Above all, instead of going around busily trying to get everyone to express Love, they quietly and gratefully watch divine Love, the one Mind, express itself as All.
"A great sanity, a mighty something buried in the depths of the unseen, has wrought a resurrection among you, and has leaped into living love," our Leader once wrote to the Chicago churches. She was referring to the recent growth and prosperity of Christian Science in their city. "What is this something, this phoenix fire, this pillar by day, kindling, guiding, and guarding your way?" she goes on to ask. And she replies, "It is unity, the bond of perfectness, the thousandfold expansion that will engirdle the world,— unity, which unfolds the thought most within us into the greater and better, the sum of all reality and good."3 The office of superintendent offers a privileged vantage point from which to observe this "mighty something" at work, as it quietly and steadily expands church and the Sunday School's all-embracing, healing activity.
