When I was a lad, I never had much use for terms that contained the word "school." There was a certain type of school, however, that was a little different than the rest. It was Bible school.
Bible School happened after regular school got out in the summer. They would have gotten better attendance if they called it something else like "Bible Camp" or "Disobedience Training." A lot of us just didn't want to leave one school and go jumping pell mell into another. But some of us had parents who had a habit of making decisions for us. They didn't buy into this modern stuff of asking the child what he wanted. So I went to Bible School.
I don't remember much about the school part. We would gather in the morning and sing some camp-type gospel songs like, "When the Roll is Called up Yonder", and "Do Lord." We never sang those songs in church because someone might get excited at the possibility of actually being on the roll, or actually having the Lord do something, and might let slip with an "amen," or some equally unscriptural outburst. However, it was OK to sing them in Bible School, because everyone knew that they were just songs for kids to sing, and didn't really have any meaning. Besides, how many kids do you know that would say "amen" right out loud?
After the singing, we would go to class, and try to guess how long the flannel graph figures would stay on the board before taking flight. One of the requirements for being a Bible School teacher was that one must have enough static electricity available in one's personality to last through three flannel-graph lessons a day, or be agile enough to catch the figures before they fell to the floor and got stuck in the Kool-aid. These newfangled projection machines, videos, and electronic story -telling equipment just don't measure up to the stuff back then. The only requirement for the students was to have enough life savers (the candy ones-not the scriptural ones) to get through a whole class and still have enough left to throw a couple across the auditorium during the closing exercises.
After struggling through the lesson and all the spiritual applications, we spent the rest of our time attempting to make our craft project look like the one in the picture. Those times were excellent preparation for college chemistry lab reports because, since it was impossible to duplicate the desired result, most of the time was spent explaining why our project didn't turn out right. As everyone knows, the highest grades in chemistry are not made by those whose lab experiments succeed, but by those who offer the most plausible explanations as to why theirs did not. It's good preparation for life in general. Adam was the first to try it.
I believe we endured these exercises for two weeks back then. Most churches seem to find it difficult to get through one week now, and some having it all in one day. Bible school, in that respect has done the way of the revival. On the last day, we would go to the lake and have a big picnic to celebrate. The teachers would celebrate survival, and the students would celebrate because they weren't teachers.
Some might wonder what good all of that ever did. I might wonder that myself but, you know, I remember those flannel-graph stories. The one about Jesus and the blind man. The one about the good Samaritan. The one about Nicodemus. The one about God so loving the world that He sent his Son. Amazing how God can speak to a kid who is determined not to hear anything. Maybe we need more of those "qualified teachers." I expect to see them when the roll is called up yonder.              DOC TRIN