Junior Endeavor In Theory and Practice

The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website.
place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits

PREFACE

This book is designed to furnish a manual of methods tried and proved, for Junior Christian Endeavor superintendents and other workers. I claim for them no merit of originality or grace of diction, but simply the merit that they have stood the test of experience.

There are no theories set forth in these pages simply as theories. They have all been worked in many societies, and most of them have been tried in my own Junior society in the course of a good many years of work with and for the children.

One cannot wander around the world, and visit Christian workers in many lands, without consulting as to plans and methods, and whenever I have read or heard of a plan that promised well, or have seen it tried, it has been my custom, “when found, to make a note on,” according to the suggestion of the famous Captain Cuttle.

This book has been made up in no small part from Junior methods thus collected from many wise workers, who have been able to lead many children into the Kingdom.

It is in the hope that these plans may in some way prove useful to others, that this manual of methods is sent out. I trust that it will be found worthy, not only of casual reading, but of actual study by young superintendents who wish to fit themselves for that difficult, but most blessed and rewarding, work of training the boys and girls for Christ and the church. It will, I trust, be used as a text – book in a correspondence school and in other ways by those who wish to make a special study of Junior methods as they have been found useful in actual experience.

Admirable helps for Junior Endeavor work have been furnished by Prof. Amos R. Wells, Mrs. Alice May Scudder, Mrs. Ella No. Wood, Miss Kate H. Haus, and many writers for many years in The Christian Endeavor World, but it has been thought by many that there was still room for a comprehensive manual of Junior methods, which should cover the whole field of Junior work, at the same time leaving out methods of doubtful utility and those that can be used only in exceptional circumstances.

The Junior Christian Endeavor societies are rapidly multiplying all over the world; the Master is blessing the faithful efforts of earnest workers for the children along these lines; and this phase of Christian effort gives promise of great and growing usefulness in the future. May this book add something, though ever so little, to the efficiency of Junior work and Junior workers in the wide field of Christian activity.