Mission Sunday-Schools by M. Bessie DeGraw

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 29, 1907

Mission Sunday-Schools

By M. Bessie DeGraw

“ONE of the most needy, as well as one of the most fruitful, fields of Sabbath-school missionary work is among the negroes of the South. This work has proved one of the most effectual agencies for their evangelization. Our greatest hope is in saving the negro boys and girls, of whom there are at least two million in our Southern States. We now have twelve Sabbath-school missionaries at work among them. They are organizing more than one hundred new Sabbath-schools every year, having them a membership of about four thousand children. One hundred and twenty mission churches have already grown from these schools during the past eighteen years. This is one of the fields into which we hope to send more workers this year.”

The preceding is a clipping from the Westminster Teacher, and it shows one phase of the missionary work now being done in the South by the Presbyterians. If they are organizing over one hundred new Sunday-schools each year, what should Seventh-day Adventists be doing?

Is not the conducting of Sunday-schools a most excellent way to reach the people in a new community? We are told in the Testimonies that it is well for us to make Sunday a day for missionary work. We find the people at leisure. If we meet them as Sunday-school teachers, we disarm prejudice, and open the avenue to the hearts of both children and parents. And when we have worked for them for a time in the Sunday-school, the Sunday-school may grow into a Christian day-school.

One of the most successful industrial schools in the South began its career as a Sunday-school, held in a leaky log cabin in the mountains of Georgia.

Let us follow the example of other missionary workers, and start Sunday-schools in the communities to which we hope to give the third angel’s message.

M. BESSIE DEGRAW.