Men's work
The few male members of churches in Guyana usually become pastors, while women take on the support roles such as teaching children and youth. To see more men in church, this trend needs to change, writes Sunday school teacher Dwayne Renville.
I GREW UP in a small community, Parika, in Guyana, where I had my first encounter with Sunday school. As a small child, as I was told, I had a very good female teacher. However, my memory dates back to when I was seven or eight years old, having a grumpy old pastor as my teacher.
By age 11 I began visiting many Pentecostal Sunday schools, most of which had one thing in common - the lone male teacher as the head of my class.
One of my favourite choruses was: "Sunday school, Sunday school, I love. When I grow a teacher I would be." I sang this chorus at the top of my voice.
When I was 14, I attended a vacation Bible school where my teacher was the male pastor of the church. I was so overwhelmed at his teaching skills and methodology on the first day that the very hairs on my skin stood straight as if I were a part of the story. This continued for all five days and at the end of the school I was singing the chorus I loved from the bottom of my heart. I wanted to be a teacher! I wanted to tell stories like he did.
Years went by and so did my inclination to be a Sunday school teacher.
However, by the time I was 20, I was one of the youth leaders in the church.
Subsequently, I was selected to take part in the life-defining CWM Training in Mission programme 2002.
There I developed a passion and the confidence to teach children little truths about God; that God should not be defined by our culture; that all that the Lord requires is that we develop a Christlike approach to life. I considered that changes are best realised by teaching children rather than re-teaching adults.
Dwayne Renville
Thus, with the cooperation of parents and church members I was instrumental in reviving the Sunday school for which I am still the superintendent and teacher in January 2003. To date its membership stands at 22.
Schooltime
I am convinced that the best person to be leading a Sunday school in my society is a male. Firstly let me say that from observation about 90 per cent of the members of the Guyana Congregational Union are women.
A confession was made one day in church. Our minister visited the home of a female church member and met the entire family: the mother and two daughters, whom he knew, and the father and son, whom he had never met.
He enquired of the son why he was never in church and got the response: "I never see my father going to church." This kind of attitude relates to the fact that besides the pastor, there are only a very few male leaders in church activities.
At one point I was the only male in the youth arm of my church, however, I was determined to change this trend.
The idea in our church used to be that Sunday school is for girls, the same with church. Since my taking over the Sunday school, however, I have seen boys and teenage males attending Sunday school with no sign of embarrassment at being in the wrong place.
They look up to me as a role model and have even indicated their interest in continuing with church activities and one day becoming teachers themselves. For the sake of having males in the church in the next 15 years, we need a whole lot of male Sunday school teachers. The boys need to know that it can be cool to attend Sunday school.
Then we will have more Christ-like male youth who will grow into good men in time to come.