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The Sunday School Express
written for www.faithwriters.com
writing challenge on the theme "Sunday School"
October 30, 2007
The rusty, scratched and dented shell of a school bus sounded as
if it would barely make it around the corner. Yet it always ran if Pete was at
the wheel as he drove the “Sunday School Express” in our rural neighborhood,
picking up all willing (and some not so willing) children within a 6 mile
radius.
This was the only way these children would get to attend Sunday School at our
local community chapel. The bus was the cast off donation that made the pick up
routine possible. Pete provided the fuel for the bus and, along with his wife
and a few other steadfast volunteers, was one of the teachers of the classes.
This was a mission effort to reach the local kids, most of whom were growing up
poor. Their immigrant and Native American parents were too weary from a week of
working the fields, logging or fishing to get to church themselves, so were
grateful for the two hour respite from their noisy children offered by the
Sunday School Express.
The chapel was a humble destination. It was a boxy building with flaking paint
and loose shingles, with a squared off steeple and a large bell to ring in the
belfry. The children would take turns tugging on the rope inside the front door
each Sunday, announcing the clarion call to all within a ½ mile that once again
the Word of God was being proclaimed in this little building.
Pete made sure these hungry children were fed from the Word along with a lunch
that would carry them through the day. He taught them the old hymns and made
sure each one received their own Bible by age eight. For years, he and his
family spent their Sunday mornings at this little chapel, not attending a church
service with a preacher or a sermon, except when it came time to do the rounds
of local congregations to ask for continued financial support for the mission
outreach he was doing.
He came to know the children well as he picked them up in the bus and then
delivered them back to their homes and would occasionally stop briefly to chat
with their parents, to ask about any needs they may have and encouraging them to
consider coming to one of the larger churches in town for worship. As he
traveled about his Sunday morning bus route week after week, he’d sometimes
discover the children’s homes abandoned, suddenly dark and empty, with no way to
know or find out where the family had gone. He would pray they would find
another home and another church would find them.
His unique ministry continued for almost a generation. As Pete’s own children
grew up and moved away, he and his wife helped recruit a pastor for the little
chapel, and it grew to become the vibrant worshiping community it is today, to
include some of the adults he had taught when they were young. They had been fed
to the point of being able to feed others and a number of them became Sunday
school teachers themselves.
Pete passed away last year, a beloved and respected father to his own children
and teacher to many hundreds of others’. His funeral service was a simple
service befitting a devout and faithful servant. What made it most remarkable
was the overflowing chapel sanctuary, filled with people who he had picked up
and delivered over the years in his rickety Sunday school bus, picking them up
from their humble surroundings and delivering them into the grace and glory of
God. He had fed them the Word and he had fed them lunch. And they returned in
the fullness of their gratitude.