Sunday School Vision
Glouster, England 1780
It all began with one word. While Robert Raikes stood on the street and listened to a woman complain that the swearing of the children on the Sabbath Day made it sound more like hell than heaven, God dropped one word into his heart--try.
Raikes took thirty kids off the street and began teaching them to read. Their first lesson was "God is one" and "God is love." He cleaned them up, gave them clothes, and taught them that vice is preventable and that a good example can draw others like a magnet.
Other children were drawn so that one school grew to seven, and after three years, he published to the world the effect of his experiment. He called it "botanizing in human nature." In a letter to a friend, he explained that his vision was to "create a new race out of what others called waste."
First Class in Mary Critchley's home.
What Raikes did was not without difficulties. The first teacher quit when a boy named Winkin Jim brought a badger to class. But Raikes hired another teacher. Mrs. Mary Critchley served for twenty-three years and passed the job to her daughter. Her efforts have earned her the honor of being the first Sunday School teacher.
Our vision for Sunday School is a continuation of Raikes's vision and the work of people like Mary Critchley. We want to raise up a generation whose faith can withstand a adversarial world.