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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
November 19, 2006
Published as a Children’s Sermon
in From Small Beginnings in 1986.
© 1986 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Dog Lick #36, 2004
© 2004 by Bud Grossmann
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OLD DOGS &
SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS
Here’s a verse from the Bible, Proverbs, the 22nd chapter, the 6th verse: “Train up a child in the way she should go, and when she is old, she will not depart from it.” Let’s listen to that again; I’ll use some different words to say the same thing: “Start a kid out on the right road, and when she grows up, you can be sure she will get to where she is supposed to go.”
At the church I belong to, one of the ways we start kids out on the right road is through our Sunday School program. I think we have had an excellent Sunday School program. You need two main things to make an excellent Sunday School program. The first one is excellent students, and we’ve got a lot of those. The other thing you need is excellent teachers.
I’m afraid we had a problem with the teachers at my church. We had a teachers’ meeting not long ago, and we were asking around to see who would teach in the coming quarter, and a whole bunch of teachers—I was one of them—said, “Hey, don’t look at me. I’ve been teaching for three or four years straight, and I’m tired. I’ve gotta take a break!” So we had a problem, finding excellent Sunday School teachers, and I understand a lot of churches have this same problem from time to time. In a minute I’ll give you kids an assignment—I’ll suggest one way you can help solve the problem, and maybe you can think of other ways, too.
First I want to tell you a story. When I was a little boy, I lived in a city. My grandparents lived on a farm. The farm was a long, long way from where my family lived. To get to the farm, we had to drive in a car all day and practically all night, so we visited my grandparents only two or three times a year. I remember one springtime when I was, oh, maybe five or six years old, when we went to the farm.
We drove all day and well into the night, and when we got to the farm, it was so late that we went right to bed. But early the next morning I heard roosters crowing and hens clucking, and I heard Grandpa and Grandma rattling dishes around in the kitchen. I could smell coffee brewing, I could hear pancakes hissing as the batter hit the griddle.
I jumped out of bed and got dressed. I wanted to run right outside, but Grandma said no. She said I had to eat a decent breakfast. But she didn’t insist that I eat a big, farm-style breakfast. Instead, she said it was all right if I had a bowl of cornflakes.
So, I sat down at the kitchen table and started working on that bowl of cornflakes, and I looked out the kitchen window as I ate. My grandparents have this huge picture window in their kitchen. You can look out and see the barn and the fields and the woods, and I said, “Grandma, where is Penny?” You see, Penny was my friend. Penny was a wonderful old dog. A beautiful spaniel with long, silky hair.
“Penny,” Grandma said, “has gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds.”
Well, I didn’t really know what Grandma meant, so I kept looking out the window, and after a while, Grandma asked me what I was looking for, and I told her I was watching the woods so I could see when Penny came back, and Grandma said, “Oh, Buddy, Penny ain’t coming back. She got old. She got tired. She was real sick, and Grandpa had to shoot her. Penny has gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds.”
Well, I was . . . I was shocked. I started crying. Tears ran down my face, ran right into my bowl of cornflakes. I guess farmers might think it’s kind of an ordinary thing that you would have to shoot an animal when she gets old and tired and sick. But that was a brand-new idea to a little boy from the city. And I guess it’s an idea I’ve really never gotten used to: seems like over the years, every time I’ve ever tried to eat cornflakes, they always seem to taste salty.
But let’s get back to talking about Sunday School. That action that my grandfather had to take with Penny was pretty drastic. I hope we don’t ever have to do anything quite so extreme with teachers who have gotten old and worn out.
But here’s what I’d like you kids to do: I’d like you to look around your congregation, and I’d like you to decide what grownup would make an excellent Sunday School teacher, and I’d like you to tell that person what you’re thinking.
I’d like you to talk with your ministers and the people in charge of your Sunday School; tell them who you would choose. Then they can have a talk with those people, too. And then we will all see if we can get more of the grownups in our churches started out on the right road. Amen.
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