Rally Day
Worship
WORSHIP RESOURCES FOR SPECIAL SUNDAYS
Welcome and Announcements
Prelude
Call to Worship
One: Go, make of all disciples.
All: We hear the call, O Lord.
One: It comes from our Creator.
All: The Bible tells us so.
One: Let us cultivate learning;
All: Let us teach the Holy Word.
One: Revealing in our witness
All: The master teacher's art.
- adapted from the hymn, "Go, Make Of All Disciples"
(Leon M. Adkins)
*Hymn "All Things Bright And Beautiful"
*Invocation
Let this service of worship, O God, be a channel by which you speak to us afresh. Enable us to listen carefully, praise joyfully, and respond wholeheartedly. Amen.
*Praise Chorus "Holy Ground"
Responsive Scripture Colossians 3:12--17
Children's Moments
Sunday School Choruses
"Deep And Wide"
"Peace Like A River"
"Hallelujah!"
"I've Got The Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy"
Presentation of Tithes and Offerings
Offertory
*Doxology
Morning Prayer
O God of life and learning, you have committed to our care developing Christians, children and adults. You have entrusted us with the scriptures, and the message of your justice, grace, power, and love. Shine your wisdom upon us so that those who teach and those who learn may grow in faith and understanding through the ministry of our Sunday school.
Help us who teach, that in our teaching, we will steadfastly pass the faith along from person to person, so that each new generation might have the opportunity to learn about you and to accept Jesus Christ for themselves.
Help us who learn, that in our learning, we may receive not only knowledge for the Christian journey, but the presence of Jesus himself.
In his name we pray. Amen.
Scripture Mark 10:1, 13--16
Sermon The Saga Of Bobby Wildgoose
Commissioning our Sunday School Teachers
[Use service from denominational worship book]
*Hymn "Jesus Loves Me"
*Benediction
*Postlude
The Saga Of Bobby Wildgoose
Mark 10:1, 13--16
The year was 1780. The place, Gloucester, England. It was a growing town, but not a particularly happy one. It was becoming an industrial center, but the unregulated rapid growth that accompanied the influx of industry exacted a high price from the community. Crime was on the rise, the poor were being exploited, and sanitary conditions were terrible. Open sewers ran along the sides of the streets.
Even worse, those were the days before child labor laws and free public education. Most children from the lower classes worked twelve--hour days, six days a week in the factories. On Sundays, their only day off, most of these kids simply ran the streets, playing games of chance, watching cock fights, stealing, and generally getting into mischief.
It happened that one day, a newspaperman by the name of Robert Raikes had to visit the local jail to see one of his employees who had landed there for some offense. In the course of that visit, Raikes was shocked to discover that all manner of people were confined there together. People of both sexes and all ages were housed in filthy conditions. Children, arrested for stealing a piece of fruit, were in the same cells with convicted adult felons. Raikes, a man with a sense of social responsibility, talked to some of these wretched prisoners and learned that one of the chief reasons for their getting involved in crime was ignorance of any other way of life.
After that visit, Raikes tried to help some of these individuals reform, but he soon found that people were entering the prison system faster than he could help them.
Some time later, a business errand took Raikes to a rundown part of the city known as Sooty Alley. There he observed a number of ragged children, cursing a blue streak and running uncared for. A woman of the neighborhood told Raikes that since that was a weekday, most of the area's children were in the factories. But come Sunday, she said, the streets would be filled with filthy urchins getting into all kinds of trouble. As far as she was concerned, she said, the sooner the kids found their way into jail, the better.
It struck Raikes, however, that if something could be done to help the young, to get them on the right track, then perhaps the stream of humanity flooding the prisons could be stemmed. Ah, he thought, a nice idea, but what could one man do in the face of such overwhelming odds?
At that moment, he heard a voice inside him say, "Try." "But I am only one person," he protested. Again the inner voice said, "Try."
He thought about that disturbing command briefly, and before the day was over, he went out and, out of his own pocket, hired four women to teach as many children as he could round up the next Sunday. When that day came, Raikes returned to Sooty Alley and got a large number of curious children to follow him to the place he'd arranged for this endeavor. There, Raikes, along with the four women, began instructing the kids in reading and in the church catechism.
And so it continued each Sunday. The children of Gloucester came to love Robert Raikes. He was a chubby man with a round, friendly face, and he wore a snow--white wig. Partly because of his appearance and partly because of his bustling energy, the children nicknamed him Bobby Wildgoose.
Guess what? That was the beginning of the Sunday School movement. Of course, the first Sunday schools were much different than ours. They were Christian schools, but because the kids involved didn't go to public school, Raikes and his teachers had to teach the whole gamut - the three R's plus hygiene and religion. The school lasted for several hours each Sunday and included a break to attend worship at a nearby church. Raikes was tireless in recruiting children for his school, and all that he required for admission was cleanliness, good behavior, and respect for the teachers.
Raikes paid those first teachers a shilling a week, but as Sunday schools spread to other towns, the practice of paying teachers soon ended. Only five years after the first Sunday school began, a Sunday school teacher in Oldham, England, refused his weekly stipend and insisted on teaching as a volunteer instead. This, in turn, made Sunday schools more self--supporting and less dependent on the wealthy class for support.
Before long, Sunday schools were springing up in many places. In 1785, they jumped the Atlantic and came to America. By 1810, only thirty years after Raikes' answered God's call to "try," the movement included more than 3,000 schools with a combined enrollment of 275,000 pupils. And of course Sunday schools have grown far beyond that today. In Wales, as early as 1811, separate classes for adults were added to Sunday schools, and this soon became a common practice throughout the Sunday school movement.
The poor were the immediate beneficiaries of Sunday schools. For most of them, the Sunday school was their only means of instruction. In time, with the advent of public education, Sunday schools were able to concentrate solely on religious instruction, but even by then, Sunday schools were responsible for shaping the faith and morals of several generations, as well as imparting Bible knowledge.
In the scripture reading for today, Jesus was teaching a crowd. (In fact, "Teacher" or "Rabbi," which means the same thing, was one of the more common titles by which Jesus was addressed.) Some people wanted to bring their children to Jesus for him to touch them, but the disciples tried to stop them. But Jesus made it clear they were to be allowed to come to him, "for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."
But Jesus went on to sweep us all in: "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."
Surely Raikes, in working with children, was doing his part to bring children the opportunity to enter God's kingdom. But imagine what would have been lost if, when he heard the voice saying, "Try," he had answered, "I can't."
I can imagine that not everyone teaching Sunday school across America feels up to the job. But time and again, people hear the call to try, and with God's help, become a positive influence on other people's lives.
Two teenagers grew up in Dallas. Both were rough and troublesome. But a faithful Sunday school teacher contacted one of them every Sunday for a year. Another teacher was urged to invite the second boy but the teacher felt he didn't want that kind of trouble in his class. The first teen finally responded. He grew up to become the Secretary of Evangelism for the Baptist Church in Florida. The other boy grew up and assassinated President John F. Kennedy. We cannot say for certain that Sunday school would have prevented that, but it might have.
You know that during the week I work in the business world. I came to that position after 25 years of being full-time in the church. Coming from that background, one of the things I've learned to really appreciate about business is how quickly things can get done. The church does many things well, but being quickly responsive to fixing things is not one of them.
I hate to admit this about church structures, but one of the things that drove me crazy, especially on the conference level, was that when we saw a problem that needed to be improved or fixed, instead of trying something, we organized a committee. That committee would meet; every faction's ideas and complaints were listened to and hashed over and then finally some recommendations were made. That report would go to annual conference where it would be debated, amended, and finally voted on. If it passed, a new committee would be assigned to implement it. A couple of years after the start, something might actually happen.
In business, we might discuss a problem for a day or two, but then we formulate a plan and start implementing it within the week. I've seen completely new products come to market just three months after being conceived.
Now I recognize that churches and businesses are different sorts of institutions, but I do think there are lessons that each can learn from the other. In many cases, businesses need to learn compassion from the church. But the church needs to learn a bias for action from business. In a comparison study done a few years ago of businesses that succeeded with businesses that weren't doing well, researchers came to this conclusion. The main difference between the two was that the failing businesses spent too much time and energy on planning, trying to cover every possible eventuality before moving on something. The successful businesses, on the other hand, kept trying things. They'd plan as best they could briefly, but once they had eighty percent of the idea together, they put it in motion, instead of laboring to figure out the remaining twenty percent and then have the idea fail anyway.
These businesses that were willing to try things quickly learned that "chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction." A favorite axiom among them is "Do it, fix it, try it," or as one blue chip company spokesman put it, "Ready, fire, aim."
We did something like that ourselves recently. We noticed that we don't have much going on for the young adults in our church. Having a year--round Sunday school class didn't seem feasible because several of the people in that age group are off to college during the year. But it occurred to us that a lot are home for the summer. So why not a summer class? Within a space of just a few weeks of when we got the idea, we sent letters to the potential class members, we secured a teacher, and we set a start date. And we had a class all summer with young adults present every week.
Now maybe there was a better way to do it. But rather than debate it and debate it, we tried something, and it worked pretty well. In fact, well enough that we'll probably do it again next summer. We've got a few plans for some things between now and then too.
In most cases, trying something that might work is better than going on and on about how hard the problem is.
When we consider the scope of our own problems or the things we feel God is asking us to do, try becomes an important word. God doesn't ask us to try alone, but to try with his help. So often, making an attempt when we feel called by God is rewarding for not just ourselves but for others.
There's a wonderful story involving the great pianist, Pade--rewski. A mother, wishing to encourage her young son's progress on the piano, took him to a Paderewski concert. After they were seated, the mother spotted a friend in the audience and, leaving her son in his seat, she walked down the aisle to talk to her. The boy, fascinated by the concert hall, got up and began to roam around, eventually coming to a door marked "No Admittance." He wandered in anyway. When the houselights dimmed, the mother returned to her seat to find her son missing. Just then the curtains parted, and to her horror, she saw her son sitting at the keyboard of the impressive Steinway grand piano on stage. He was sitting there innocently plucking out, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
At that moment, Paderewski made his entrance and saw what was happening. He went over to the piano and said to the boy, "Don't quit. Keep playing." He then reached his left hand out and added a bass part to the boy's melody. Next he reached around the boy with his right arm and added a running obbligato, and together the boy and the grand master gave the audience a wonderful creative experience. The audience was mesmerized.
Most of the time when God calls us to try, I think he means we should do what Robert Raikes did - get in there and start plucking out the melody the best we can, and then trust God to add the chords that turn our efforts into a concerto.
We're back in Gloucester now, and the year is 1811. Robert Raikes has just ordered a new waistcoat and is looking forward to wearing it. He plans to have dinner with his brother. But death strikes suddenly, and the useful life of this warmhearted, far--seeing good man comes to an end. His coffin leaves the house borne on the shoulders of friends - a common practice in that day.
What is not common, however, is that a large crowd of children precedes his coffin to the church where the funeral will take place. They were some of those introduced to the faith and given a better chance at life - all because Bobby Wildgoose tried.
Stan Purdum
Prelude
Call to Worship
One: Go, make of all disciples.
All: We hear the call, O Lord.
One: It comes from our Creator.
All: The Bible tells us so.
One: Let us cultivate learning;
All: Let us teach the Holy Word.
One: Revealing in our witness
All: The master teacher's art.
- adapted from the hymn, "Go, Make Of All Disciples"
(Leon M. Adkins)
*Hymn "All Things Bright And Beautiful"
*Invocation
Let this service of worship, O God, be a channel by which you speak to us afresh. Enable us to listen carefully, praise joyfully, and respond wholeheartedly. Amen.
*Praise Chorus "Holy Ground"
Responsive Scripture Colossians 3:12--17
Children's Moments
Sunday School Choruses
"Deep And Wide"
"Peace Like A River"
"Hallelujah!"
"I've Got The Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy"
Presentation of Tithes and Offerings
Offertory
*Doxology
Morning Prayer
O God of life and learning, you have committed to our care developing Christians, children and adults. You have entrusted us with the scriptures, and the message of your justice, grace, power, and love. Shine your wisdom upon us so that those who teach and those who learn may grow in faith and understanding through the ministry of our Sunday school.
Help us who teach, that in our teaching, we will steadfastly pass the faith along from person to person, so that each new generation might have the opportunity to learn about you and to accept Jesus Christ for themselves.
Help us who learn, that in our learning, we may receive not only knowledge for the Christian journey, but the presence of Jesus himself.
In his name we pray. Amen.
Scripture Mark 10:1, 13--16
Sermon The Saga Of Bobby Wildgoose
Commissioning our Sunday School Teachers
[Use service from denominational worship book]
*Hymn "Jesus Loves Me"
*Benediction
*Postlude
The Saga Of Bobby Wildgoose
Mark 10:1, 13--16
The year was 1780. The place, Gloucester, England. It was a growing town, but not a particularly happy one. It was becoming an industrial center, but the unregulated rapid growth that accompanied the influx of industry exacted a high price from the community. Crime was on the rise, the poor were being exploited, and sanitary conditions were terrible. Open sewers ran along the sides of the streets.
Even worse, those were the days before child labor laws and free public education. Most children from the lower classes worked twelve--hour days, six days a week in the factories. On Sundays, their only day off, most of these kids simply ran the streets, playing games of chance, watching cock fights, stealing, and generally getting into mischief.
It happened that one day, a newspaperman by the name of Robert Raikes had to visit the local jail to see one of his employees who had landed there for some offense. In the course of that visit, Raikes was shocked to discover that all manner of people were confined there together. People of both sexes and all ages were housed in filthy conditions. Children, arrested for stealing a piece of fruit, were in the same cells with convicted adult felons. Raikes, a man with a sense of social responsibility, talked to some of these wretched prisoners and learned that one of the chief reasons for their getting involved in crime was ignorance of any other way of life.
After that visit, Raikes tried to help some of these individuals reform, but he soon found that people were entering the prison system faster than he could help them.
Some time later, a business errand took Raikes to a rundown part of the city known as Sooty Alley. There he observed a number of ragged children, cursing a blue streak and running uncared for. A woman of the neighborhood told Raikes that since that was a weekday, most of the area's children were in the factories. But come Sunday, she said, the streets would be filled with filthy urchins getting into all kinds of trouble. As far as she was concerned, she said, the sooner the kids found their way into jail, the better.
It struck Raikes, however, that if something could be done to help the young, to get them on the right track, then perhaps the stream of humanity flooding the prisons could be stemmed. Ah, he thought, a nice idea, but what could one man do in the face of such overwhelming odds?
At that moment, he heard a voice inside him say, "Try." "But I am only one person," he protested. Again the inner voice said, "Try."
He thought about that disturbing command briefly, and before the day was over, he went out and, out of his own pocket, hired four women to teach as many children as he could round up the next Sunday. When that day came, Raikes returned to Sooty Alley and got a large number of curious children to follow him to the place he'd arranged for this endeavor. There, Raikes, along with the four women, began instructing the kids in reading and in the church catechism.
And so it continued each Sunday. The children of Gloucester came to love Robert Raikes. He was a chubby man with a round, friendly face, and he wore a snow--white wig. Partly because of his appearance and partly because of his bustling energy, the children nicknamed him Bobby Wildgoose.
Guess what? That was the beginning of the Sunday School movement. Of course, the first Sunday schools were much different than ours. They were Christian schools, but because the kids involved didn't go to public school, Raikes and his teachers had to teach the whole gamut - the three R's plus hygiene and religion. The school lasted for several hours each Sunday and included a break to attend worship at a nearby church. Raikes was tireless in recruiting children for his school, and all that he required for admission was cleanliness, good behavior, and respect for the teachers.
Raikes paid those first teachers a shilling a week, but as Sunday schools spread to other towns, the practice of paying teachers soon ended. Only five years after the first Sunday school began, a Sunday school teacher in Oldham, England, refused his weekly stipend and insisted on teaching as a volunteer instead. This, in turn, made Sunday schools more self--supporting and less dependent on the wealthy class for support.
Before long, Sunday schools were springing up in many places. In 1785, they jumped the Atlantic and came to America. By 1810, only thirty years after Raikes' answered God's call to "try," the movement included more than 3,000 schools with a combined enrollment of 275,000 pupils. And of course Sunday schools have grown far beyond that today. In Wales, as early as 1811, separate classes for adults were added to Sunday schools, and this soon became a common practice throughout the Sunday school movement.
The poor were the immediate beneficiaries of Sunday schools. For most of them, the Sunday school was their only means of instruction. In time, with the advent of public education, Sunday schools were able to concentrate solely on religious instruction, but even by then, Sunday schools were responsible for shaping the faith and morals of several generations, as well as imparting Bible knowledge.
In the scripture reading for today, Jesus was teaching a crowd. (In fact, "Teacher" or "Rabbi," which means the same thing, was one of the more common titles by which Jesus was addressed.) Some people wanted to bring their children to Jesus for him to touch them, but the disciples tried to stop them. But Jesus made it clear they were to be allowed to come to him, "for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."
But Jesus went on to sweep us all in: "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."
Surely Raikes, in working with children, was doing his part to bring children the opportunity to enter God's kingdom. But imagine what would have been lost if, when he heard the voice saying, "Try," he had answered, "I can't."
I can imagine that not everyone teaching Sunday school across America feels up to the job. But time and again, people hear the call to try, and with God's help, become a positive influence on other people's lives.
Two teenagers grew up in Dallas. Both were rough and troublesome. But a faithful Sunday school teacher contacted one of them every Sunday for a year. Another teacher was urged to invite the second boy but the teacher felt he didn't want that kind of trouble in his class. The first teen finally responded. He grew up to become the Secretary of Evangelism for the Baptist Church in Florida. The other boy grew up and assassinated President John F. Kennedy. We cannot say for certain that Sunday school would have prevented that, but it might have.
You know that during the week I work in the business world. I came to that position after 25 years of being full-time in the church. Coming from that background, one of the things I've learned to really appreciate about business is how quickly things can get done. The church does many things well, but being quickly responsive to fixing things is not one of them.
I hate to admit this about church structures, but one of the things that drove me crazy, especially on the conference level, was that when we saw a problem that needed to be improved or fixed, instead of trying something, we organized a committee. That committee would meet; every faction's ideas and complaints were listened to and hashed over and then finally some recommendations were made. That report would go to annual conference where it would be debated, amended, and finally voted on. If it passed, a new committee would be assigned to implement it. A couple of years after the start, something might actually happen.
In business, we might discuss a problem for a day or two, but then we formulate a plan and start implementing it within the week. I've seen completely new products come to market just three months after being conceived.
Now I recognize that churches and businesses are different sorts of institutions, but I do think there are lessons that each can learn from the other. In many cases, businesses need to learn compassion from the church. But the church needs to learn a bias for action from business. In a comparison study done a few years ago of businesses that succeeded with businesses that weren't doing well, researchers came to this conclusion. The main difference between the two was that the failing businesses spent too much time and energy on planning, trying to cover every possible eventuality before moving on something. The successful businesses, on the other hand, kept trying things. They'd plan as best they could briefly, but once they had eighty percent of the idea together, they put it in motion, instead of laboring to figure out the remaining twenty percent and then have the idea fail anyway.
These businesses that were willing to try things quickly learned that "chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction." A favorite axiom among them is "Do it, fix it, try it," or as one blue chip company spokesman put it, "Ready, fire, aim."
We did something like that ourselves recently. We noticed that we don't have much going on for the young adults in our church. Having a year--round Sunday school class didn't seem feasible because several of the people in that age group are off to college during the year. But it occurred to us that a lot are home for the summer. So why not a summer class? Within a space of just a few weeks of when we got the idea, we sent letters to the potential class members, we secured a teacher, and we set a start date. And we had a class all summer with young adults present every week.
Now maybe there was a better way to do it. But rather than debate it and debate it, we tried something, and it worked pretty well. In fact, well enough that we'll probably do it again next summer. We've got a few plans for some things between now and then too.
In most cases, trying something that might work is better than going on and on about how hard the problem is.
When we consider the scope of our own problems or the things we feel God is asking us to do, try becomes an important word. God doesn't ask us to try alone, but to try with his help. So often, making an attempt when we feel called by God is rewarding for not just ourselves but for others.
There's a wonderful story involving the great pianist, Pade--rewski. A mother, wishing to encourage her young son's progress on the piano, took him to a Paderewski concert. After they were seated, the mother spotted a friend in the audience and, leaving her son in his seat, she walked down the aisle to talk to her. The boy, fascinated by the concert hall, got up and began to roam around, eventually coming to a door marked "No Admittance." He wandered in anyway. When the houselights dimmed, the mother returned to her seat to find her son missing. Just then the curtains parted, and to her horror, she saw her son sitting at the keyboard of the impressive Steinway grand piano on stage. He was sitting there innocently plucking out, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
At that moment, Paderewski made his entrance and saw what was happening. He went over to the piano and said to the boy, "Don't quit. Keep playing." He then reached his left hand out and added a bass part to the boy's melody. Next he reached around the boy with his right arm and added a running obbligato, and together the boy and the grand master gave the audience a wonderful creative experience. The audience was mesmerized.
Most of the time when God calls us to try, I think he means we should do what Robert Raikes did - get in there and start plucking out the melody the best we can, and then trust God to add the chords that turn our efforts into a concerto.
We're back in Gloucester now, and the year is 1811. Robert Raikes has just ordered a new waistcoat and is looking forward to wearing it. He plans to have dinner with his brother. But death strikes suddenly, and the useful life of this warmhearted, far--seeing good man comes to an end. His coffin leaves the house borne on the shoulders of friends - a common practice in that day.
What is not common, however, is that a large crowd of children precedes his coffin to the church where the funeral will take place. They were some of those introduced to the faith and given a better chance at life - all because Bobby Wildgoose tried.
Stan Purdum
