Just Try! 

A great Protestant tradition in Northern Ireland is Sunday School. Most growing up in that community have memories of being sent out on a Sunday afternoon for an hour of Bible lessons, chorus singing, memory verses, sweetie prizes and gifts for attendance. Few though realise that if it wasn’t for one man in Gloucester, there may never have been such a thing as Sunday School.

Robert Raikes was a newspaper owner in the late 1700’s. He was a religious man who regularly attended his local cathedral. But each Sunday evening he had to arrange the columns of his paper for distribution the next day. But outside his window on Sunday’s the noise of so many urchins and ragamuffins playing in the street was so distracting. In Britain at that time poverty was prevalent. Poor parents would take their children out of school when they reached seven or eight to have them work and earn a crust. Six days a week, 12-14 hours a day these children laboured. Sunday was their only time off and making mischief and devilment on a Sunday was their release valve from the daily grind. This bothered Robert Raikes greatly. He began to earnestly pray for them.

A couple of weeks later he was walking along one of the back streets of his city and saw again these ill clad, dirty, and troubled children getting up to no good. The ‘destitution of the children and the desecration of the Sabbath by the inhabitants of the city,’ as he described it afterwards, made him stop. He stood still. “Can nothing be done?” he asked aloud. A voice, as it seemed, answered clearly. “Try!” It was as clear as the voice Saul of Tarsus heard on the Damascus Road. There and then he determined to start a school for Sundays. He then shared his vision with a local clergyman who was as excited about it as he was.

Initially it wasn’t religious classes, it was simply giving the children a little of the education they had been missing. The usual three R’s and some crafts, also some Bible teaching thrown in. But from this developed more and more the spiritual lessons, Bible teaching etc. Soon the idea caught on and all over Britain Sunday School classes took off. Christian men and women especially began to teach classes and introduced the children to the stories in the Bible we now know so well.

John Wesley, the great Methodist leader, was very impressed with Raikes Sunday Schools that he wrote to a friend and said,  “I think these Sunday Schools are one of the noblest specimens of charity which have been set on foot in England since William the Conqueror.” 

So today, a big shout out to all those Sunday School teachers, who have been so faithful to serve the Lord by teaching our children each Lord’s Day. Perhaps you too may have a desire in your heart to do something for God’s kingdom, but are somewhat nervous about making a start. Why don’t you be like Robert Raikes, just “Try!” 

- Pastor David Goudy