When I was Young Sunday School Was Important

When I was young Sunday school was important. At the Springfield Church of God more people went to Sunday school than attended morning worship. In Sunday school I made friends, sang, learned a lot about the Bible, and got to know adults who loved Jesus and me.

Sunday school started at 9:45 with “Opening Session.” In smaller churches like my grandmother’s this was a time when everybody gathered in the sanctuary for an official opening for the day; the Sunday school superintendant presided over a reading of the “golden (Scripture) text”, prayer, and announcements. Since Springfield was larger with several hundred attendees we had our opening session in age graded departments: Kindergarten – ages 3 to 5, Primary – grades 1 to 3, Junior – grades 4 to 5, etc.

I seem to recall that younger children went straight to their classes. I first remember opening sessions when I entered the first grade and joined the “Primary Department.” I felt big going to Opening Session. We met in the Fellowship Hall on the first floor of the Education Building. Shirley and her friends were there. My mother’s best friend, Evelyn Bayer, played the upright piano for us to sing. We sang songs like “I’ll be a Sun Beam,” “The B-I-B-L-E,” “I’m in the Lord’s Army,” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”

One Sunday I was sitting behind Shirley while we stood to sing. Her best friend Terry Heath was standing next to her. When she went to sit I pulled the chair out from behind her and she went down, a gag I had seen somewhere. Sister Juanita Jones, a friend of my mother, told her what I had done. “I never would have thought Jackie would have done such a thing. He’s always such a good boy.” I was just having fun but suddenly I was caught in a moral dilemma, fun can be bad but feel so good. People had perceptions of who I was, a good boy, and I liked that. I doubt those lessons were in the printed curriculum.

In the 4th grade I went upstairs to the Junior Department. We were crowded into a smaller room. It was often noisy. Bigger kids talk to each other a lot. In the Primary Department we sat with our teacher and class. In the Junior Department we got to sit wherever we wanted. I liked to sit on the back row. There I could watch everything. I was becoming self-conscious of myself as a social being. I didn’t feel like I fit in although I had friends. But I loved to sing; we sang songs like “Only a Boy Named David,” and “V is for Victory.”

It was also in the Junior age that my Sunday school teachers became important. I was growing up and like all children that age I was beginning to understand who I was apart from my family. When I was younger I felt connected to my mother through my teachers. They were all women and they were friends of my mother. In the Junior Department the boys and girls were divided during class time. My teachers were men who I didn’t connect with my mother: Brother Grant - 4th grade, Brother Hutto -- 5th grade, and Brother Ellington -- 6th grade.

Brother Grant was a lawyer. His conversion and membership in our church was something of a milestone for the congregation. He was the first professional with a graduate degree to become one of us. Up to that time Sunday school teachers had to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but an exception was made for Brother Grant. He had to be seeking to be filled with the Spirit. For several years I watched him seek and he was serious about being filled with the Spirit. He would frequently pray in the altar, weeping and sweating profusely, until he became like a drunk man. Sometimes, for reasons I did not and do not understand, a couple of men would get him up and walk him around the sanctuary, one under each arm, praying as they went.

On the first Sunday of the school year Brother Grant told us he had a goal for us for the year. He wanted us to memorize the names of the books of the Bible in order. He would help us and test us each Sunday. Within a couple of weeks we had all memorized the names of the books and he announced a new set of goals involving a lot of Scripture memorization: the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, etc.

He also started us on a pattern of engaging the Scriptures looking for meaning. His method of teaching was simple; after giving us an opportunity to recite from memory the assigned text we started the lesson. We each took our turn in the order in which we were seated reading one verse and commenting on its meaning. After each there was an open discussion. He would guide the conversation and add other points. Mostly, he affirmed our opinions and questions as important. Occasionally he would refer us to our parents (“What is circumcision?” “What does it mean ‘Abram knew Sarai’?”) He was learning with us. More than once I overheard him say “Those boys are teaching me more than I am teaching them.”

Grady Hutto was a burly, brick mason who had become a building contractor. On our first Sunday that year he announced he had a goal for us. He goal for the year was that we would all be baptized in the Holy Spirit. He encouraged us to seek for the baptism. He prayed for and with us in the altars of our church. Before the year was out we each had powerful experiences with the Spirit.

Although he never said so, Brother Hutto also set out to involve us in ministry. He would periodically take us, one or two at a time, out on visitation. We would visit the homes of boys our age who did not attend church. I am not sure where he got the names and I can’t remember any of them coming o Sunday school but I remember the long walks to the front doors. He also took us fishing a couple of times that year.

Brother Ellington was a smaller, quiet, piano mover. He had recently married Sister Jones, a widow with two sons a few years older than me. On the first Sunday he also announced a goal for us. He shared that when he first got active in church as an adult he became an usher and one Sunday the Pastor asked him to pray over the offering. He had never done anything like that and couldn’t get the words to come out. He wanted us to be able to pray in public. Every Sunday we had multiple opportunities to pray: the beginning of class, for prayer requests, and at the close of the class. We became comfortable praying in public.

The boys with whom I went to Sunday school during my Junior years grew up to serve the Lord, most as pastors. Timmy Hicks and his cousin Calvin Hammontree are Church of God pastors. Danny Smart and Aubrey Dykes (Aubrey was actually a year older but often attended our class) became Assembly of God pastors. I have lost all track of David Spencer although the last I heard about him in young adulthood he was an active church member. Gerald Jones joined our class sometime around the middle of the fifth grade and has remained an active church member.

I have little or no contact with the men those boys became. I lost contact with most of them when as I entered the 7th grade the church split over a relocation plan and my family went with the new congregation located closer to our house. About a decade ago Timmy took a class I teach at the seminary. I have bumped into Calvin a few times at church meetings. I periodically see Danny’s younger brother David, a graduate of our Seminary who is a career military chaplain for the Church of God. Perhaps more than any other group outside of my family these boys helped me sort through whom I wanted to become. They were mirrors of what it means to discover God in the presence of discovering myself. By God’s grace, with the influence of our families and a loving church, we resolved together to be faithful followers of Christ.

I have often reflected on the influence of these three Sunday school teachers on the Kingdom of God. None of them ever became famous or even well-known outside their families and local churches. And neither would any of us in the class. But how does anyone measure their influence? Collectively that small Sunday school class of boys has grown up to touch tens of thousands with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have traveled around the world, married and raised children to serve God. We have preached unknown numbers of sermons, given Godly counsel, performed weddings and funerals. At our best we have extended the ministries of these three Godly men by becoming co-learners with others on the journey toward Heaven. They helped point us in the right direction and deserve to share the credit for anything we have done for God. Perhaps, the true giants of the faith are those who serve faithfully, give themselves to others, and risk being transparent in their own search for fulfillment.