In The Christian Science Journal of October 1895, Mary Baker Eddy sent out this call: "I hereby notify the loyal Christian Scientists who use the Bible, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, as their textbooks, to organize immediately a Sunday School for the children." Ever since this announcement, teachers in Christian Science Sunday Schools have been nurturing the innate spirituality of children, helping them discover and understand their relationship to their one true Parent. Much of the motive and mission of Sunday School is captured in the title given to our Leader's announcement: "What We Can Do for the Children." The Christian Science Journal, October 1895, p. 268. Among other things it's a helpful reminder that a Christian Science Sunday School is for the children; its mission is to help them spiritually. Although many future church members will have attended the Sunday School, our purpose in having a Sunday School is not to build up the number of church members but to provide for the children—as many children as are willing and ready to receive it— the kind of education that will help them live more closely to God.
Sunday Schools are forums for spiritual exploration and discovery, laboratories where the demonstrable truths of Christian Science, as revealed in the Bible and in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, are learned and applied in their healing practicality. Sunday Schools can be very exciting places, because students and teachers are striving together to know and feel something of the immediacy and wonder of God and their relationship to Him. A good Sunday School discussion isn't people's theorizing about religious abstractions; it's their honest sharing of how the revealed truths of Christian Science can open all involved to a powerful, new understanding of who they are and what their lives are really about. Students and teachers search together for the spiritual facts they can bring to bear on the trials and questions of daily experience. Sunday School students sometimes put their personal problems on the table, seeking spiritual direction and support in solving them, and healings often occur as a result of what is learned in such discussions.
In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul spoke of the "carnal mind" See Rom. 8:7.—that erroneous, limited state of thought that would oppose God, good, and all that He creates and governs. This is the basic evil; the false sense of reality that Christians are putting off as they strive to have the "mind . . . which was also in Christ Jesus." Phil. 2:5. You can be sure that a carnally-minded depiction of Sunday School will greatly differ from the description given earlier. In the stolen voice of "common sense," the carnal mind would argue all kinds of things to workers and would-be workers in Christian Science Sunday Schools. An example might be: "Christian Science Sunday Schools are a burden to maintain." Wise to its insidiously harmful inclination, we can turn this suggestion back on itself by asking: What is the cost of not having a Sunday School? In order to appreciate that cost we may need to awake more fully to just what the mission of Sunday School is and to the promise the Christian Science Sunday School holds for the children of the world.
