Steps Ministers Ought to Know About Sabbath School Quarterly Preparation

Step One: Sabbath school lessons are pro­jected and voted approximately five years in advance by a committee composed of a repre­sentative group of experienced workers—nine from the General Conference officers and Sab­bath School Department staff, ten union con­ference Sabbath school secretaries, one college Bible teacher, one editor, one evangelist, and one pastor. The committee endeavors to sched­ule a well-balanced program of Bible study so there will be variation in the topics from quar­ter to quarter, with approximately equal op­portunity given to the study of doctrine, proph­ecy, biography, devotional life, as well as book study. Then careful consideration is given to selecting the best-qualified authors to prepare lessons on the various topics chosen.

Step Two: Notification is sent to each pro­spective author that he has been chosen to write upon a given topic. An instruction book­let giving detailed information as to the pro­cedure to be followed in writing the series of lessons is sent to the suggested writer so he will know exactly what is expected of him. He is asked to make a spiritual, evangelical presen­tation of the assigned subject. If the person selected does not see his way clear to accept the invitation, then another is chosen.

Step Three: The writer usually takes from one to two years to complete his assignment. He then sends the manuscript to the General Conference Sabbath School Department.

Step Four: Now careful consideration is given to the suitability of the manuscript. If it is accepted, it is given a first careful editing to make it conform to the style and other re­quirements of the Quarterly. Next it is mimeographed and sent out to the Sabbath school lesson reading committee, which consists of ap­proximately forty members and is made up of ministers, editors, college professors, and over­seas representatives. The reason for including overseas representatives is that these men from different sections of the world will know whether it will be possible for the suggested lessons to be translated into the respective lan­guages. Also because of world conditions and political tensions, lessons that would be usable in one area might not be used in other areas without causing our people untold persecution and suffering.

Step Five: The reading of the manuscript is done by the lesson committee. It is the respon­sibility of this committee to read the lessons critically, giving special attention to orthodoxy, textual exegesis, accuracy, authenticity, inter­pretation, and appropriateness. The readers then return their manuscripts on which they have made their notes, comments, corrections, and general and specific suggestions.

Step Six: The suggestions made by the read­ers are carefully tabulated and typed in order that resident members of the committee in Washington may carefully study all suggestions made. On a set day each quarter at a regularly called meeting of the resident members of the Sabbath school lesson committee (fourteen in all), copies of the tabulated suggestions are placed in the hands of the members present. This committee then prayerfully goes over the manuscript page by page, considering the sug­gestions made by the larger reading committee from the world field and making final sugges­tions to the Sabbath School Department editors.

Step Seven: The final step is the editing of the manuscript in harmony with the decisions of the lesson committee. This is done by three members of the Sabbath School Department staff. When this editing is completed the les­sons are Mimeographed again and sent out to the publishing houses around the world for translation where necessary and for printing into hundreds of different languages.

Four to five years, or even more, elapse from the time a lesson assignment is made before it is actually studied by the members in the Sab­bath schools.

This will give you some idea of the tremen­dous amount of work that goes into a set of Sabbath school lessons. Sometimes there may be those who are concerned over certain points that are emphasized or not emphasized in the lessons. There is probably a good reason for this if we understood the full background of the problems involved.