Sunday School Prize Giving

How is this for a list of prizes to give to your Sunday school children?

Bible, Hymn Book, Elpis Israel, Twelve Lectures, Bible Atlas, Josephus, Hallam’s Middle Ages of Europe, Throne of David, Pillar of Fire, St. Paul at Rome, From Egypt to Sinai, The Land and the Book, The Judgments of Jerusalem, Stories from the His­tory of Rome, The Treasures of the Deep, Natural History of the Bible, Stories of the Reformation, The Ocean and its Wonders, The Exodus, Egypt, Prince of the House of David, Treasury of the Animal World, The Kings of Israel, Narratives from the Old Testament, Manners and Customs of the World, Threads of Knowledge, Bible Jewels, Daily Texts, Bible Pictures, History of Solomon, The Book of Books, Ruth, The Prodigal Son, Ark Alphabets, Sketches of Jewish Life, Hebrew Heroes, Natural History, Bonar’s Days and Nights in Eastern Lands, Thompson’s Scripture Charac­ters, Nimmo’s Young Men of the Bible, Cruden’s Concordance, Ruined Cities of Bible Lands, Bible Dictionary (Beeton), Traditions of Palestine, History of Crusades, Lost Cities brought to Light, Jerusalem, Pictorial and Descriptive, Jordan and its Valleys, Tables of Stone, Story Pictures from the Bible, Thompson’s In the Holy Land, Scripture Manners, Kitto’s Palestine, Eastern Manners, Wanderings over Bible Lands and Seas, Browne’s Tabernacle, Reformation D’Aubigne, Travels in Many Lands, History of the Saracens, Jerusalem and its Environs, History of Joseph, Moses, &c., Naomi, Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.1

This list appeared in The Christadelphian magazine, December, 1879, and was supplied by Sis. Mary Turney, Sunday School Superintendent and occasional music director of the Birmingham Ecclesia in England. It was described as “a list of books that have been used as prizes in the Birmingham Sunday School.”

If nothing else, the compilation and publication of such an extensive list tells us that Sis. Turney took Sunday school superintending very seriously. I am not sure what the list tells us about the reading habits of young people back then, but at least the expectations that were set for them were very high, and it is safe to say that they had far fewer distractions than young people have today.

The tradition of Sunday school prize giving continues amongst us more than 130 years later. We still give our children some of the same books: Bibles, the Hymn Book, Bible Atlas, Concordance2and Bible Dictionary. But it is always a challenge to find other good, spiritually helpful books that are likely to be read and valued by our children.

Two new books

Let me start with a couple recommendations. Beyond these, I invite Tidings read­ers to send me additional recommendations. With your help, it may be possible to compile and publish a list of current titles, suitable for prize giving, that begins to measure up to Sis. Turney’s impressive list of 1879!

In Sydney, Australia, recently, some of the “seniors” (ages 15 to 25) knew exactly what Sunday school prize they wanted. They asked their Sunday school teachers for copies of Bro. Ron Hicks’ new book, My Journey in Faith. Anyone who has read Bro. Ron’s book (2010) will know what a good choice these young people made. In many respects, this is a book about life choices founded on enlightened faith. What more could any Sunday school teacher want his or her students to contemplate and pursue? Copies of My Journey in Faith can be obtained for $10 (U.S.) through the Tidings. Details are given below.

Test Case for Canada ‘3314545’, by Bro. E. R. Evans, is not a new book. It was first published in 1972. The book relates the experiences of Bro. John Evans, a Christadelphian conscientious objector in World War I. What is new about this book is the fact that it has been republished (2009) by the Christadelphian Scrip­ture Study Service in South Australia and now comes with a DVD. The DVD is a portrayal of Bro. Evans’ life, very effectively enacted by the Christadelphian young people of Adelaide.

It is important for us to keep before our young people the issue of conscientious objection to participation in war. In the current era of all-volunteer armies, at least in western countries, it is easy to forget that military conscription puts the consciences of all Christadelphians to a stiff test. The republication of Bro. John Evans’ story is a timely reminder of this fact. The book and DVD can be obtained for $14.50 (U.S.) from Bro. Tom Graham at The Thousand Oaks Christadelphian Library. Go to www.christadelphianlibrary.com and click on Newest Publications.

Some other suggestions

In this day and age, the prizes we give to our Sunday school children do not always have to be books. If sales at our Bible school bookstores are any indication, the young people very much enjoy the music CDs that other Christadelphian young people have produced. Selected DVDs can also make good Sunday school prizes. If the young people in your ecclesia have never seen the God’s Family Around the World series of DVDs, these will greatly enrich their appreciation of the worldwide nature of our brotherhood. The series is a set of professionally produced docu­mentaries on the brothers, sisters and children of Jamaica, Ireland, El Salvador, Russia, India, and Nigeria. For more information go to new.wcfoundation.org and click on WCF Online Store, Video (DVD).

And how would you like to give the serious young Bible students in your Sunday school a prize like this one: 30 English versions of the Bible, 10 ancient language versions (including the Interlinear Greek New Testament, the Septuagint, and two Hebrew texts), three lexicons, 20 Bible dictionaries, and a wide range of com­mentaries — all rolled into one, at a cost that is no more than the price of a single printed Bible? I am referring to a Bible software package called the Online Bible. (While you can go online and download a free starter version of this software, the name Online Bible refers to the software, not the way the material is accessed.)

The Online Bible comes on a DVD and can be loaded onto the hard drive of any computer. It comes in Windows and Macintosh versions. It is a Bible software package that students can grow with. The Online Bible can be used for tasks as basic as doing the daily Bible readings in any version you like. Cross referencing3is quick and easy. Word searches4can be instantly carried out in any version of the Bible or in any of the Bible commentaries that are included. OLB also supports tasks as sophisticated as searching the Septuagint for the use of a Greek word, or carrying out logic searches5that go well beyond the routine concordance search, or studying the parsing6of Greek and Hebrew verbs.

In my estimation, the Online Bible is one of the most versatile Bible software packages for the price, and it is easy to use. A single copy of the Windows version costs $39.95 (U.S.). Purchasing multiple copies for prize giving reduces the price considerably: the price for five copies is $24 each, and the price for ten copies is $20 each. If you think this prize-giving idea is an interesting one, go to www. online-bible.com and find out more about it.

Your recommendations invited

With this, I again extend the invitation to you to send me additional recommenda­tions for Sunday school prize giving. Prize suggestions for younger children are just as important as those for older ones. Please tell me about your top picks. If I get a good response to this request, I will do my best, God willing, to compile a 21st century list of suitable prizes and publish it for any Sunday school superin­tendent, teacher, or thoughtful gift-giver to use.

  1. The Christadelphian,1879, p.618.
  2. Note that the KJV concordance given to Birmingham Sunday School children in 1879 was Cruden’s Concordance. Robert Young’s Analytical Concordance had only just been published that year, and James Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance would not be published until 1894.
  3. The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge is one of the best cross-referencing systems available.
  4. Word searches can be carried out in original languages as well as English. They can also be carried out using Strong’s Numbers in the versions where these apply.
  5. Online Bible supports AND (&), OR (|), and NOT AND (~) searches. For example, the AND search can be used to show that the words soul & heaven do not occur together in any verse in the New Testament.
  6. Verb characteristics such as tense, voice, and mood.