Scott.—­Boys’ Conference in Community and County (American Youth, April, 1911) (.20).

Smith.—­The Maine Boys’ Conference (American Youth, April, 1911) (.20).

XIV

THE SECONDARY DIVISION OR TEEN AGE BOYS’ CRUSADE[9]

The Older Boys’ City-wide Conference is outlined in the previous chapter.  It is a good, but intermittent, form of Inter-Sunday school activity for boys.  The Secondary Division or Teen Age Boys’ Crusade is a permanent form for such activity, and may be launched at the Older Boys’ Conference.

The idea of the Crusade germinated in the minds of the members of the Toronto Secondary Division Committee in connection with a Sunday school Older Boys’ Conference in December, 1912.  The objectives around which the idea grew were a campaign for Organized Classes in every school, an effort to reach Toronto’s 10,000 non-Sunday school, teen age boys and a training class for adolescent leadership.  At the evening banquet, at which the Crusade was presented, 55 Sunday schools registered for the campaign and 187 older boys signed up for training and the effort to reach the boys not in Sunday school.  At a later meeting a plan of action was decided upon.

The Objective

The aims to be kept in mind are fourfold:  (1) To magnify the Christian life and the preeminence of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord; (2) to organize the teen Christian boys of the Sunday school for organized service; (3) to reach the teen non-Sunday school boys for Sunday school attendance; (4) to train the teen boy for Christian leadership.

=The Crusade Outlined=

Campaign of Bible Class Organization

1.  It is proposed that every class in the teen age or Secondary division of every Sunday school be organized according to the International Standard, and that the boys of the schools be given the task. (See International Secondary Division Leaflet No. 2.)

Campaign of Enlistment

2.  Coincident with the campaign of organization there should be a systematic effort to reach every boy of the teen age for membership in the Sunday school.  This may be accomplished through two methods: 

(a) Census and Survey.  The city should be divided into districts and mapped out by squares.  Then the teen age campaigners should go two and two for the purpose of a census-taking.  The two-by-two system will result in more thorough work, and it gives the opportunity of helping the more timid boys by linking them with the bolder ones.  An entire square should be worked by the partners, both making the same call, and every teen age boy in the town, whether a Sunday school attendant or not, can be located this way.  For this purpose an ordinary filing card may be used, printed as follows: 

Date ______________________

Name ______________________

Address ______________________

Religion (Catholic, Jew, Protestant)?