Books on Christian education that appeared in 1974 and early 1975 offer a broad spectrum of approaches and creativity. This compensates in part for a decline in new titles in comparison with the previous few years.
Those who minister to children take note: the single most significant book to come along recently is Childhood Education in the Church edited by Roy Zuck and Robert Clark (Moody). A comprehensive picture of childhood training, encompassing philosophy and methodology, is painted by a host of leaders in the field. This is a commendable integration of time-proven education practices with sound Christian teaching. Treatment of some of the techniques is rather brief, but bibliographies are provided for further study.
Continuing with the pre-school and very young learner: Moody Press is to be thanked for its five paperback how-to books by Marie Frost entitled: A Guide For Visitation, Songs to Sing, Effective Teaching, Pupil Characteristics, and Action Rhymes. Victor Books has a very fine list of paperbacks including You Can Teach 2s and 3s by Mary Barbour and You Make the Difference for 4s and 5s by Mary Le-Bar. A really helpful book for use in both home and church is Wesley Haystead’s You Can’t Begin Too Soon (Regal). Smile! Jesus Is Lord by Lavern Franzen (Augsburg) offers fifty basic lesson plans, using a variety of visual aids, to enliven the Sunday-school or children’s-church message. Pre-teens deficient in the basics of how we got our Bible and how it spread can be given no finer instruction tool, planned as a self-instruction book, than Paul and Mary Maves’ Discovering How the Bible Message Spread (Abingdon). Michael and Libby Weed coauthored the excellent Bible Handbook For Young Learners (Sweet), written from an unobtrusive Church of Christ perspective. From England and from the pen of the venerable William Barclay come two paperbacks published by Hodder and Stoughton, Marching Orders and Marching On, both subtitled “Daily Readings for Young People.” Silent Thunder by Bernard Palmer (Bethany), the fictionalized account of an American Indian boy’s discovery of Jesus, offers a clearly written, intriguing presentation of the Gospel for pre-teens. This has recently been made into a film as well. Offers solid supplementary material.
The junior-high category was poverty-stricken this year. Explore, a resource edited by Janice Corbett (Judson), will be useful. High schoolers fared better. Continuing Explore, and decidedly more evenly evangelical, is Respond edited by Mason Brown (Judson). The American Baptists also give us the excellent total-church plan for youth in Youth Ministry: Sunday, Monday, and Every Day (Judson) by John Carroll and Keith Ignatius. Four more good books are Turnabout Teaching (David C. Cook) by Marlene LeFever, Making Youth Programs Go (Victor) by Terry Powell, Impactivity: Youth Program Resources (Broadman) by Helen May, and Extend: Youth Reaching Youth (Augsburg) by four Lutheran-oriented experts. Of an odd sort is Dennis Benson’s Electric Love (John Knox), which ought not to be ignored as slightly kooky: evangelicals can recycle him to make his ideas scintillating.
The philosophy of Christian education at its most pragmatic is found in Tailor-Made Teaching in the Church School (Westminster) by Mary Duckert. A sound premise and unsound application characterize Ronald Goldman’s Readiness For Religion (Seabury); he advocates a developmental base that lacks sufficient biblical grounding. A publisher of high-quality teaching aids for a Roman Catholic audience, easily adapted to an evangelical use, is Twenty-Third Publications; Continuing Christian Development is a collection of essays, editor unnamed. Planning Christian Education in Your Church (Judson) is a little booklet by Kenneth Blazier and Evelyn Huber. Baptists of a different variety will garner much from The Sunday School Reaching Multitudes (Sword of the Lord) by Tom Malone. He has no use for professional curricula, but many of his ideas are worth study.
Two books from Pflaum are for consideration in teacher-training workshops. The Learning Process in Religious Education by Richard Reichert pulls together the hows and whys of learning that many Sunday-school teachers lack. Integrating Values by Louis Savary demonstrates various religious value applications through exercises that implement his theory.
Project suggestions were plentiful. Among them: Margaret Self’s Creative Fingerfun (Regal) for tiny tots; Banners and Mobiles and Odds and Ends (Morehouse Barlow) by an author known only as “Vienna,” whose ideas are clever but whose theology we avoid (in other books); and Robert Hill’s You Can Be a Ventriloquist (Moody). Dennis Benson collected program and project ideas from church groups across the country and presents them in potpourri fashion in his Recycle Catalogue (Abingdon). Lawrence Richards makes available his impressive training, experience, and insight in a more complete form with the publication of the final four books of his Effective Teaching Series (Moody). You and Preschoolers (which he did with Elsiebeth McDaniel), You and Adults, and You the Parent are the texts, while You and Teaching serves as a study guide for the full six-volume series. The American Lutheran Church continues its yearly volume series with The Pastor’s Role in Educational Ministry (Fortress) edited by Richard Olsen. The magazine Trading Post (Twenty-Third) is chocked full of teaching ideas for all levels, drawn periodically from its sister monthly, Religion Teacher’s Journal (Twenty-Third).
Summer calls for VBS Unlimited (Victor) by Jerry Jenkins and W. A. Blakely. Camping programs can use two David C. Cook paperbacks, both by Yvonne Messner: Camp Devotions and Campfire Cooking.
The Christian day-school movement gets a helping hand from propagandist Elmer Towns in Have the Public Schools “Had It”? (Nelson). The same idea is pushed less polemically, by Paul Kienel in The Christian School: Why It Is Right For Your Child (Victor). Far and away the best is To Prod the “Slumbering Giant” (Wedge), essays by a group of staunch Reformed Christians who demand that thinking believers establish their own school systems.
Wheaton college philosophy professor Arthur Holmes examines The Idea of the Christian College (Eerdmans), contending that the primary purpose is to integrate faith and learning.
The sophisticated student and church can’t go wrong by using Don Gillis’s The Art of Media Instruction (Crescendo). A much simpler and useful book is Audiovisual Idea Book For Churches (Augsburg) by Andrew and Mary Jensen. Everything You Need to Know For a Cassette Ministry by Viggo Sogaard (Bethany) tells you just that, in detail.—DALE A. SANDERS, pastor of Riverside United Methodist Church, Fort Dodge, Iowa, and CATHERINE DAY, CHRISTIANITY TODAY staff.
