The Challenge of the Country Part 18

CHAPTER VII

RURAL CHRISTIAN FORCES

CHAPTER VII

RURAL CHRISTIAN FORCES

_The Community-Serving Church and Its Allies_

I. _Opportunity and Function of the Country Church_

Its necessity to rural progress.

Stages in its evolution, and its changing ideals.

The test of its efficiency.

The church's broad function: community service.

Its high responsibility: spiritual leadership.

II. _Some Elements of Serious Weakness_

A depleted const.i.tuency. Economic weakness.

Lack of social cooperation. Wasteful compet.i.tion.

Poor business management. Moral ineffectiveness.

Narrow vision of service. Inadequate leadership.

III. _Some Factors Which Determine Its Efficiency_

A worthy const.i.tuency.

Local prosperity and progressive farming.

Community socialization. A community serving spirit.

A broad vision of service and program of usefulness.

United Christian forces in the community.

A broad Christian gospel; not sectarian preaching.

A loyal country ministry adequately trained and paid.

A liberal financial policy. Adequate equipment.

Masculine lay leadership developed and trained.

A community survey to discover resources and needs.

IV. _Some Worthy Allies of the Country Church_

The country Sunday-school.

The Rural Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation.

The County Work of the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation.

V. _Types of Rural Church Success_

Some real community builders.

The church in the open country.

Oberlin, the prince of country ministers.

CHAPTER VII

RURAL CHRISTIAN FORCES

THE COMMUNITY-SERVING CHURCH AND ITS ALLIES

I. The Opportunity and Function of the Country Church.

_Its Necessity to Rural Progress_

The city man's judgment of many things rural is apt to be warped. The country is a better place than he thinks it is. Country inst.i.tutions are doing better than he thinks they are; and the country church is by no means as dead and useless as he is apt to imagine. Ridiculing the plan to federate three village churches, a typical city man remarked, "What is the use? Three ciphers are just as useless together as alone!" Such a superficial verdict must not be accepted. The church in the country is certainly involved in a serious and complex problem. In many places it is decadent. In most places it is easily criticised for its meager successes in this age of progress; but it is still essential in spite of its defects.

No amount of unfavorable criticism can refute the fact that a community-serving church is the most essential inst.i.tution in country life. Criticise it as we may for its inefficiency, it is to the country church that we must look to save the country. Even though it may be usually a struggling inst.i.tution, inadequately equipped, poorly financed, narrow in its conception of its mission, slow in responding to the progressive spirit of the age, wasting its resources in fruitless compet.i.tions, and often crude in its theology and ineffective in its leadership,--nevertheless it is blessing millions of our people, and remains still the one supreme inst.i.tution for social and religious betterment. It may be criticised, pitied, ridiculed. It has not yet been displaced.

Because the rural church is absolutely essential to the rural community, it must be maintained, whatever be the cost. Let _surplus_ local churches die, as they ultimately will, by the law of the survival of the fittest.

The community-serving church must live. The man who refuses to sustain it is a bad citizen. Dr. Anderson rightly claims "The community needs nothing so much as a church, to interpret life; to diffuse a common standard of morals; to plead for the common interest; to inculcate unselfishness, neighborliness, cooperation; to uphold ideals and to stand for the supremacy of the spirit. In the depleted town with shattered inst.i.tutions and broken hopes, in the perplexity of changing times, in the perils of degeneracy, the church is the vital center which is to be saved at any cost. In the readjustments of the times, the country church has suffered; but if in its sacrifices it has learned to serve the community, it lives and will live."[33]

To condense diagnosis and prescription into a single sentence: _The country church has become decadent where it has ceased to serve its community. It may find its largest life again in the broadest kind of sacrificial service._

_Stages of Country Church Evolution_

In this rapidly growing country, particularly in the past century of empire-building in the great West, four rather distinct stages of development may be traced in the history of the country church. As the railroads have pushed out into all sections for the development of our natural resources, the apostles of the Christian faith have usually been in the van of the new civilization. Too often they have been apostles of diverse sects, pious promoters coveting for the church of their zeal strategic locations and a favorable advantage in the conquest of the country for The King. But in general, the story of beginnings in the planting of our American churches has been a tale of real heroism, of devotion to the highest welfare of humanity and the glory of G.o.d, and of untold sacrifice. In brief these stages of church evolution are as follows:

1. The period of pioneer struggle and weakness, through which practically all churches have had to pa.s.s.

2. Usually a period of growth and prosperity, sharing the growth of the community; or, if the new town failed to justify its hopes, a period of marking time, under the burden of a building debt.

3. The period of struggle against rural depletion, the rural church meanwhile losing many members to the cities. Apparently a majority of country churches are now in this stage and for many of them it is a n.o.ble struggle for efficient survival. Thousands of churches however have succ.u.mbed, 1,700 in the single state of Illinois.

4. The ultimate stage of this evolution is the survival of the fittest, the inevitable result of the struggle. Most churches have not yet worked this through, but when they do, it is by _readjustment to a redirected rural life_. It costs much sacrifice in time and money. It requires the church to study frankly its situation and to surrender cheerfully old notions of success and to broaden its ideals of service.

_Old and New Church Ideals_

The pioneer type of the circuit-rider church may still be found among the mountains and other neglected or scattered sections of the country. Its ideal of success is very simple: a monthly preaching service when the "elder" makes his rounds; and an annual "protracted meeting" in which the leader "prays the power down" and all hands "get religion," presumably enough to last them through the year. For this kind of success only three factors seem to be essential: a leader with marked hypnotic power, an expectant crowd ready to respond to his suggestion, and a place to meet.

The place may be simply a roof over a pulpit. Results are meager and the same souls, may be, have to be saved next year.

We would not deny the itinerant heroes of pioneer days the credit they deserve for their self-sacrificing labors. Unquestionably they served their generation well, as well as conditions allowed. But most churches have outgrown this low ideal of success. They plan a more continuous work.

They desire more than merely emotional results. They appeal to intelligence and to the will and make the culture of Christian character the great objective. Such work is vastly important; but a still higher and broader standard must be raised to-day for country church success.