The history of Sunday School By Ruth Doris Lemos: Sitting at his desk on a Sunday in October of 1780 the dedicated journalist Robert Raikes tried to focus on the editorial he wrote for the newspaper of Gloucester, owned by his father. It was difficult for him to fix your attention on what I was writing for the screams and curses of children playing in the street under his window, constantly interrupting his thoughts. When the fights became heated and aggressive threats, Raikes found it necessary to go to the window and protest the behavior of children. All settled down for a few minutes, but soon returned to their bickering and screams.
Robert Raikes looked at the picture in front of you, while writing an editorial calling for more reform in the prison system. He urged the authorities about the need to recover the prisoners, rehabilitating them through study, courses, classes and something useful while they were carrying their feathers, so that when they leave prison could find honest jobs and become valuable citizens in the community. Raising his eyes for a moment, he began thinking about the fate of street children, little ones being created without any study that would give them a future different from that of their parents. If you continue this way, certainly many on the road to addiction, violence and crime.
The city of Gloucester, in the Central West of England, was an industrial hub with large textile factories. Raikes knew that the children worked in factories alongside their parents, from sunrise to sunset, six days a week. While parents rested on Sunday, the hard work of the week, the children were roaming the streets seeking his own. They took to the streets and squares, playing, fighting, disturbing the silence of the sacred Sunday with his noise. At that time there were no public schools in England, only private schools, privilege of the wealthier classes who could afford the high costs. Thus, poor children were not studying, working in factories all day, except Sundays.
Raikes felt troubled in spirit to see so many disadvantaged children growing up in this way, no doubt, upon reaching adulthood, many of them fall into the criminal world. What could he do?
For a better future
Sitting at his desk, and pondering this situation, a plan was born in his mind. He decided to do something for poor children, which could change your life, and guarantee them a better future!Putting aside his editorial on the reforms in prisons, he began writing about the poor children who worked in factories, with no opportunity to study and prepare for a better life. The more he wrote, he felt more excited about his plan to help children. He solved this first editorial only call attention to the deplorable condition of the little ones, and the next he would present a solution that was taking shape in his mind.
When you read your editorial, there were some who felt sorry for the children, others thought the newspaper should worry about more important issues than children, particularly children of poor workers! But Robert Raikes had a dream, and this was filling his heart and his thoughts more and more! In the following editorial, explained his plan to start classes in literacy, language, grammar, mathematics, and religion to children for several hours Sunday. He made an appeal through the newspaper, for women with intellectual preparation and willing to help them in this project, teaching in their homes. Days later an Anglican priest of the parish indicated teachers to work.
The enthusiasm of the children was very moving and contagious.Some did not agree to exchange their freedom to Sunday, from sitting in the classroom, but eventually all were learning to read, write and do sums in arithmetic. The stories and Bible lessons were the moments most anticipated and fun to the whole curriculum. Soon, the children learned not only the Bible, but lessons in morality, ethics, and religious education. It was a truly Christian education.
Robert Raikes, this great man of humanitarian vision, not only campaigned through his newspaper to raise money for school supplies, but also clothes, clothes, shoes for poor children and groceries to prepare them a good Sunday lunch. He was often seen accompanied by his faithful servant, walking in the snow with his flashlight in the cold winter nights. Raikes did it in the poorest pockets of the city to take shelter and food for street children who die of cold if no one took care of them, leading them to his house to find a home for them.
The children gathered in the squares, streets and private homes.Robert Raikes paid a small salary to the teachers they needed, others paid their expenses from their own pockets. There were also some altruistic people of the city, which contributed to this noble effort.
Worldwide movement
Raikes met resistance at the beginning of his work, among those he least expected - the church leaders. They thought he was desecrating the sacred and profane Sunday church with their children have not behaved. There was at this point that some churches were opening their doors Sunday for Bible classes, seeing that they had a salutary effect on children and youth of the city. Great men of the church, such as John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, soon joined enthusiastically in the work of Raikes, judging it to be one of the most effective for teaching the Bible.
The Bible classes began to spread rapidly to neighboring towns, and finally to the whole country. Four years after its founding, the Sunday School had over 250 000 students, and when Robert Raikes died in 1811, the Sunday School had 400 000 students enrolled.
The first Sunday School Association was founded in England in 1785, and in the same year, Sunday School Union was founded in the United States. Although the work was begun in 1780, the organization of Sunday School on a permanent basis, dates back to 1782. On November 3, 1783 is celebrated the founding date of the Sunday School. Among Protestant churches, the Methodist stands out as the pioneer work of religious education.In large part, this view is due to its dynamic founder John Wesley, who saw the spiritual potential of the Sunday School and immediately joined the great movement under his leadership.
The Sunday school emerged in Brazil in 1855 in Petrópolis (RJ).The young Scottish missionary couple, Robert and Sarah Kalley, arrived in Brazil that year and immediately set up a school to teach the Bible to children and young people of that region. The first class was held on Sunday, August 19, 1855. Only five attended, but Sarah, glad to "small beginnings," told the story of Jonah, more with gestures than words, because he was just beginning to learn Portuguese. She saw so many children in the streets that his heart longed to win them to Jesus. The seed of the Gospel was planted in fertile soil.
Over time, increased both the number of people studying the Bible, that the missionary Kalley started classes for youth and adults. Seeing the growth, Kalleys then moved to Rio de Janeiro, to give continuity to the best work and increase the range. This humble beginning of Sunday Bible classes began the Evangelical Congregational Church in Brazil.
In the world there are many things that people are not sincere and humanitarian think or imagine the extent of influence that their actions can have. Certainly, Robert Raikes never imagined that the simple lessons he started among poor and illiterate children of his city, in the English countryside, would grow to be a great world movement. Today, the Sunday School has more than 60 million students enrolled in more than 500,000 Protestant churches in the world. It is the tiny mustard seed planted and watered, which grew to become a great tree whose branches extend around the globe.
Dorris Ruth Lemos is the American missionary working in Brazil, journalist, professor of Theology and a founder of the Biblical Institute of the Assembly of God (IBAD) in Pindamonhangaba (SP)
The CPAD and Sunday School
The CPAD has a remarkable career in the Sunday School of the Brazilian churches. The first magazines began to be published as a supplement to the first journal of the Assemblies of God - Good Seed newspaper, which circulated in Belém, Pará, in the early 20s. The supplement was called Sunday Studies, written by the missionary Samuel Nystrom, Swedish pastor extensive biblical and secular culture, and Sunday school lessons in the form of sketches for three months. In 1930, the first general convention of the Assemblies of God held in Natal (RN) saw the merger of the Good Seed newspaper with a similar one was published by the Church of Rio de Janeiro, the joyful sound, causing the MESSENGER OF PEACE. At that time (1930) was launched in Rio de Janeiro magazine Bible Lessons for Sunday Schools. His first commentator and editor was the missionary Samuel Nystrom and then the missionary Nils Kastberg.
In its early days the magazine was quarterly Bible Lessons and then switched to every six months. The reasons were not only scarce financial resources, but mostly the slowness and lack of transport of cargo, which was all that time and only coastal sea, along the coast. The magazine took a long time to reach the distant parts of the country. With the improvement of transport has become the magazine quarterly.
In the 50 advancing CPAD was considerable. The magazine Bible Lessons as commentators started to have men of God like Eurico Bergsten, N. Lawrence Olson, John de Oliveira, José Menezes and Orlando Boyer. Its safe and conservative teachings from the Bible has shaped a whole generation of new believers. The result also a great harvest of workers for the harvest of the Master.
The first magazines for children were only to emerge in the 40s, in the management of the journalist and writer Emilio Conde, as publisher and editor of CPAD. The magazine, written by the teachers and Cacilda Nair Soares de Brito was the first CPAD effort to better reach the child population of our churches. Later, the enthusiast and promoter of Sunday School with us, Pastor José Pimentel de Carvalho, CPAD created and launched by a new children's magazine, My comic book, which for lack of support, resources, staff, and appropriate machines had short life.
It used to be the biblical text and commentary on the Bible Lessons (youth and adults) for all ages. Many pastors, teachers and Sunday School students complained about the insurmountable difficulties of teaching subjects extremely difficult, even inappropriate and inconvenient for the little ones.
Bible School in Rio de Janeiro in April 1946
In the 70's emphasized more and more the need for new magazines to Sunday School, graduated according to different age groups of students. This occurred mainly as the caped (training Sunday School Teacher), launched by CPAD in 1974, went to Brazil. It was so also in 1974 with the creation of the Sunday School Department (now Division of Christian Education), begins to plan and work out the various biblical curriculum for all age groups as well as their respective journals for student and teacher and also the visuals for the early ages. The plan outlined in 1974 and released in the management of Gilberto Antonio Pastor, the Sunday School Department, was reformulated and relaunched in 1994 in the management of his brother Ronaldo Rodrigues, Executive Director of CPAD, in fact, was only finished in 1994, after all redirect the curriculum has been created with new journals such as the range of 15 to 17 years and of discipleship for new converts, new looks designed, increasing the number of pages of the magazines of students and teachers and created new standard covers visual graph and packaging of the visuals.
After two editions of magazines and curriculum (1994 to 1996 and from 1997 to 1999), the CPAD presented in 2000, a new edition with great new teaching areas, visual and graphic. In 2007, once again CPAD comes out ahead with the publication of the new curriculum (effective) - based on current views and assumptions of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Educational Psychology.
Missionary Eurico Bergsten and wife
Missionary Samuel Nyström
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