4. The fourth principle is Organisation.

The law of the boy life in adolescence is organization, or the gang.  The church has its choice, either to let the boys organize themselves on the outside, under self-directed and therefore incompetent leadership, or to organize the boys on the inside of the church, provide a definite place for this organization, and so permeate the gang instinct with the spirit of Christian altruism.  Every church organization for boys, the organized Bible class, the church club, and other church forms of organization, are aiming to do just this thing.  The law of the boy’s life is to associate with his fellows and the expression of his purposes is team work.  The church, through suitable organization, can meet this need of the boy life.

5. The fifth and last principle is Leadership.  Leadership is inseparable from organization, and organization is useless without leadership.  The leadership which is necessary for a group of adolescent boys is that of a man, and the problem which is presented to a leader with a group of boys in the adolescent years is not that of teaching, but of awakening virile ideas and purposes in the boy life.  The leader must be able to enter into sympathy with and in at least a partial way into participation with all the activities of the group.  Everything that a boy does is just the thing that the man used to do.  There is, therefore, little hardship, but instead the joy of living again, when a man becomes the leader of a group of boys.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

Alexander (Editor).—­Boy Training (.75).

Boys’ Work Message (Men and Religion Movement) ($1.00).

Robinson.—­The Adolescent Boy in the Sunday School (American Youth,
April, 1911) (.20).

VII

METHOD AND ORGANIZATION

=Organization=

By organization is meant, of course, boy organization, the form of organization that attempts to keep the adolescent boy tied up to the interests of the church.  Today the forms of organization for this purpose are legion, and strangely enough every such form but one has its headquarters outside of the local church it seeks to serve.  The one exception is the form known as the Boys’ Organized Bible Class, an integral part of the Sunday school with no allegiance of any sort or kind to any organization but the local church of which it is a part—­bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh, muscle of its muscle.