Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 2, 1915

Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church

UNDER the heading “Methodism’s Right Arm of Power,” the Northwestern Christian Advocate of October 6, on its front page presents some interesting facts concerning the Sunday schools:—

If the record of the fall conferences shall equal the record of the spring conferences, we shall close the year 1915 with more than four and one-half millions in the Sunday schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This is the largest single Sunday school constituency in the entire world. It is an army so great in numbers, and so vast in its educational and evangelistic resources, that the mind is fairly staggered at its possibilities.

Since 1908 our Sunday school membership has increased by more than 1,200,000, a gain four times as great as that of the eight years immediately preceding, and more than one third as great as our entire Sunday school growth in the century and a quarter preceding. Our increase in eight years alone would make a constituency as great as the Sunday school membership of the Congregational and Protestant Episcopal Churches combined. Methodism has witnessed many great movements, but never one of such magnitude as this one.

During the last eight years more than 1,400,000 scholars have been converted to Christ, and more than $5,000,000 have been contributed by our Sunday schools to the missionary and benevolent work of the church; and the end is not yet. Those who are close to the heart of this movement assure us that only a beginning has been made; that the fringe of our Sunday school development has hardly been touched as yet. The greatest conquests are yet to come.

The importance of the Sabbath schools to our denomination is no less than that of the Sunday schools to the Methodists.