The Church on the Changing Frontier Part 7

CHAPTER IV

The Church Dollar

One way, though by no means the only way, that the Church can judge of its successful work is by the financial support that it receives. In this Range country nearly all of the Church dollar is raised locally, except about twelve cents donated toward church work by denominational boards.

Various methods are used by the local church for raising the other eighty-eight cents. Half the churches use a budget system. That is, they set down at the beginning of the fiscal year an itemized budget of the amount which they need, on the basis of which amount subscriptions are obtained from each church member or family. Twenty-five churches finance all their work this way and ten churches budget only their local needs.

Thirty-two churches make an annual every-member canva.s.s, i.e., every member is asked regularly each year to contribute something toward the church. Weekly envelopes, in single or duplex form, are used in twenty-four churches. Forty churches can be said to have a system of regular, frequent payments. The rest of the churches depend upon various combinations of quarterly or annual payments, plate collections at services, bazaars and other money-raising devices.

Incidentally, the Ladies Aid and Missionary Societies are real stand-bys in the matter of church upkeep and benevolences. In fully half the churches, women's organizations undertake to raise some part of the church expenses in various ways, from regular weekly contributions to distributing bags to be filled with pennies for every year of the contributor's age, or by making gayly colored holders at three cents each.

Nearly one hundred thousand dollars were raised by the 3,956 active members in the year of the survey. This is the "real thrill" of the church dollar. The total amount of the budget raised on the field by sixty-eight of the seventy churches[3] was $97,571.98. Of this amount $70,910.74, or little less than three-fourths, was procured by subscriptions; $9,464.24, or slightly less than one-tenth, by collections, and the balance of the $17,197.00 by miscellaneous means. This is an average amount per church of $990.25. Here again it is clear that the larger the membership of a church, the greater the impetus from within for further growth and activities. This condition is evident in the various church campaigns. The city churches raise more than twice as much as the churches in the town, village or country, but with their larger membership there is not a corresponding drain on the individual. Thus, the city and village church members give about the same, $24.87 and $24.47 respectively per year; the town members give $29.63; the country members, with fewer buildings, fewer services, and less resident ministers to maintain than the members in the centers, pay $16.12 each.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHART VI

Figures refer to total amount raised and spent, including Home Mission Aid.]

Considering that nearly half the churches raise their money haphazardly, the average contribution per church and per member, in these four counties on the Range, is most encouraging. Of course, it must be borne in mind that 1919-1920 came at the end of the fat years, and hard upon this prosperous period followed the lean one of high freight rates and low prices for farm products. Church finances depend in part upon the practical presentation of the financial needs of the Church, and upon education in Christian stewardship--i.e., in learning the value of church work at home and abroad. But there is another side to the question which is quite as vital. Is the Church rendering a real service to the community, and has it an adequate and worth-while ministry? After all, people cannot be expected to give more than they receive in service.

Not quite all the money was spent. In each group there was a small surplus; $85.00 for the country churches, $64.24 for the village, $64.00 for the town, and $365.89 for the city churches. Of the total amount spent, $41,268.79, or about 43 per cent., paid salaries, $24,657.55, or 25 per cent., was given to missions and benevolences, and the remaining 32 per cent. was used for local expenses and upkeep. The total amount given to benevolences averages $6.27 a year. All the money spent averages $24.67 per resident active member, a good record indeed for a homesteading country.

The question of benevolences is important because many churches offer no other means to their members of learning and practising unselfish giving and service. One of the standards adopted by the Interchurch World Movement was that the amount given to benevolences should at least equal 25 per cent. of the total amount spent. The proportion of all money raised which is used to pay salaries and local expenses is higher in country and village churches, while the proportion given for missions and benevolences is lower than in the town and city churches. In other words, the country and village churches have less surplus over and above their running expenses. Benevolences receive 14.3 per cent. of all money raised by the country churches, and 12.75 per cent. of all money raised by the village churches. Town churches, on the other hand, give 23.84 per cent. of their receipts to benevolences, and the city churches give 33.65 per cent. The finances of city churches are well proportioned, almost an equal amount going for salaries, missions and all other expenses.

Home Mission Aid

It has already been stated that about twelve cents of the church dollar come from the denominational boards in the form of Home Mission aid. The total amount given to the local churches in the year preceding the survey was $12,937.50, which went to forty-one churches in amounts varying from $50 to $750. Two more churches would have been receiving aid if they had had a pastor, and still another church had there been a resident pastor.

Of the forty-one churches receiving aid, two are city, seven are town, seven are village and twenty-five are country churches.

Of course, some of these churches, in their turn, hand back money to other boards in the form of missions and benevolences. All the city churches give $13,382.04 in benevolences and missions and receive $2,100; all the town churches give $8,304.96 and receive $3,035; the village churches give $1,650 and receive $3,650, and the country churches give $1,320 and receive $4,152. By counties, Beaverhead gets back 46.8 per cent. of what she gives, Hughes gets back 47.3 per cent., Sheridan 37.2 per cent., while Union is the only county which receives more than she gives--24.4 per cent. The churches which receive aid send back to the boards $2,872.79. In a word, the churches send money to the church boards, who in turn remit this money. This would seem a strange story to some one not versed in church ethics and denominational procedure. But giving and serving is one of the fundamental ideas of the Christian religion, and money given for missions and benevolences is good training as well as definitely a service to humanity.

The Range has always been Home Mission territory; justifiably too, because homesteaders have not been able to pay for religious ministry. A homesteader's "bit" is hard earned enough, and seldom adequate to his needs. Nevertheless, the problem of financial aid is always a serious one.

Subsidization of persons as well as inst.i.tutions must be wisely handled or moral deterioration is likely to set in. The Y. M. C. A. never subsidizes a county for its rural work. If the county cannot pay, it must do without the work. Ordinarily, several counties combine for rural Y. M. C. A. work and have one secretary among them.

An excellent grading system for their aided fields has been worked out by the Presbyterian Home Mission Board.[4] One of the first questions considered is the prospect of self-support. How far has it been the policy of the Boards to help a church to a status of self-support? Forty-four of the seventy active churches have had aid during the last thirty years.

Only four of these churches are now self-supporting. It has already been pointed out that three churches did not receive aid during the year preceding the survey because they lacked pastors. Development toward self-support has evidently not been a criterion of the Boards in granting money.

Another test is whether the field is a "strategic service opportunity"--either allocated to this denomination or a field presenting a unique need. Some of the churches fall within such a cla.s.sification. A total of about $207,170 has been received, given by eleven denominations.

City churches have received $40,850, town churches $67,465, village churches $47,430 and country churches $51,425. Of the total amount, $44,980 has gone to fifteen strategic service churches. In addition, four of the aided churches receiving $27,000 serve special groups of population, of which one is Swedish, one Norwegian, and two are German Lutheran churches. There remain thirty churches receiving $136,190. Three churches, receiving $6,830, are the only ones in their community. All the rest are in communities with other churches, at least one of which in each case is aided.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NEGLECTED OUTPOST OF CHRISTIANITY

A village church in the center of a large unevangelized area, served by a minister living thirty-five miles away.]

Aid Misapplied

Some aid has very evidently been granted without a definite understanding on the part of the board as to whether other churches were concerned, whether the community could really support a church, whether, after all, it was good sense to a.s.sist a church in that particular situation. Not very much money has been spent. More could have been used to advantage. As H. Paul Dougla.s.s says in "From Survey to Service," "It is in the nature of the case that the conquest of distance by the Gospel will take very disproportionate amounts of money compared with other forms of missions.

It can be cheap only when it is adequate." The policy has too often been to help keep alive a great many struggling churches which did little to justify support, rather than to develop a smaller number of churches in greater need of help in a poorly churched area. In other words, the policy has been one of denominational expansion rather than of denominational concentration and demonstration. Home Mission aid too often creates futile compet.i.tion within a community by supporting a church for selfish denominational purposes. Some of these churches were better dead, and they would have died of natural causes but for Home Mission aid.

There are good and bad instances of denominational help. One denomination has aided three churches for thirty years, but has not helped any one of them for the last ten years. They had reached a self-supporting status.

But, when a denomination lavishes $18,000 of Home Mission aid in keeping alive a church in a village of 150 population, where there is also another church, and when the village is situated near to a large, well-churched center, such aid is wasted. The same denomination fails to give with liberality to a far needier case, the only Protestant church in a small village, a railroad center, located fairly in the center of a large unevangelized area. In one of its valleys, a resident recently remarked that they had heard no preaching for twenty years. This instance of neglect is in Montana, and the territory has been allocated to this denomination since 1919, so that other churches are keeping their hands off. Yet this church, which had a resident pastor until two years before the time of the survey, is now being served by a pastor of a town church living thirty-five miles away who preaches there on a _week-day_ night. No preaching on Sunday, no pastoral work, obviously no community work in the village and no touch at all on the districts outside of the village! How well could the lavish aid of $18,000 have been put to use in this churchless area! This desperate condition needs as much aid every year as _all_ the Boards give _all_ forty-one aided churches at present. Instead, this church has been allocated to one denomination, and is now getting less attention than before. This case const.i.tutes an abuse of the principle of allocation.

CHAPTER V

To Measure Church Effectiveness

Add members contributing to the support of an organization to a probable minister and possibly to a building and you have the ground-plan of the average church in this Western country. What, then, is the church program?

How are the churches attempting to serve their members, and just how much are they contributing through their program and activities to the life about them, toward bringing about a genuine Christianization of a community life? Religious values, it is true, are spiritual and cannot be tabulated in statistical tables. This fact is as fully recognized as the corollary that circ.u.mstances often limit ideals. What the churches are doing, however, ought to be a fair test of their underlying purpose. In a word, then, what do they consider their job and are they "putting it across"?

Opportunities for Worship

All the churches have services for the preaching of G.o.d's word, but it has already become evident in the preceding pages that in certain sections of the Range country the Church, even as a social factor, is regarded rather as a curiosity by the men. An amusing story with a Bret Harte flavor is told of an early meeting in Beaverhead County. The hall in Glendale, a busy place then, with banks, restaurants, even a paper, was filled with a rough-and-ready audience of miners and cowboys listening to a lantern lecture. Vastly delighted over the trick, one man after another quietly rose from his seat and stepped out of the window. When the preacher ended his talk and the hall lighted up not a soul remained but himself. The next day, however, his audience made it right. They pa.s.sed a hat and collected $300 for him.

As has been noted, more than half of the church buildings are adapted to preaching and nothing else, nineteen churches, of necessity, holding their meetings in school houses. The frequency of services varies. The larger centers have an abundance of church meetings. All but two of the town and two of the city churches have two preaching services each Sunday. But only three country and two village churches are so fortunate. Two additional churches, one a village and one a town church, have the advantage of two services a Sunday because they unite regularly with other churches near them, both of which hold two services a Sunday.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOT A STORE BUT A CHURCH

Christian Church at Des Moines, Union County.]

Forty-five of the seventy churches have less than two services a Sunday.

Of thirty churches, twenty-five country and five village churches, each has less than four services a month. Those located in the larger well-churched centers have an ample number of services, while the majority of churches with less than two services a Sunday are country churches. Yet most of these are holding the only service in their community.

Seventy-three and five-tenths per cent. of all the country churches have less than four services each month, and 44 per cent. have only one service or even less. All but one of the eighteen churches with only one service or less per month are country churches. Ten churches hold special musical services. Mid-week prayer meetings are held by sixteen of those which have two services each Sunday, but by only one of the forty-five churches in the group holding the fewer number of services.

Except in winter, the chief handicap to attendance in Beaverhead and Sheridan lies in the rugged landscape. Country members in all the counties have real difficulty in getting to church throughout the year. Most of them have long distances to go, and the roads make travel difficult in winter and early spring. In summer, haying is carried on very generally seven days of the week, and church attendance is a problem even if the church service is held at night. The aggregate monthly attendance is 18,337 and as the total number of services is 286, the average attendance per service is about sixty-five persons, low enough, but higher than the average active membership per church, which is about fifty-six. Average seating capacity, active membership and attendance compare as follows:

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHART VII]

Country Village Town City Churches Churches Churches Churches Total Average seating capacity 129[5] 177[6] 285 436 233 Average active membership 18 36 91 196 56 Average attendance at services 34 37 72 112 65

It is evident from the table above that the churches are only about one-fourth filled on the average. Nothing is more disheartening than a church three-quarters empty in which the echoes of the minister's voice reverberate over the vacant seats.

Union Services

Tangible evidence of cooperation and good-will among churches of different denominations is found in "union" services, which thirty-eight churches might reasonably hold in these counties. Just twenty-one of these churches do unite, the majority for Thanksgiving Day services and in fewer instances, for Chautauqua, Baccalaureate, Memorial Day, and summer evening services. In two instances, two churches, Methodist and Presbyterian, are uniting for services and Sunday schools, their other organizations meeting separately. Since the time of the survey, two churches, located in an overchurched hamlet, have also temporarily put this plan into effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CASE OF COoPERATION

The M. E. Church at Blunt, S. D., which being pastorless joined with the Presbyterian Church for preaching services.]

Evangelism

A greater portion of the evangelistic work is done through revival meetings, although less than half of the churches hold them. Of all the members admitted on confession of faith by all the churches during the year, 76 per cent. were converted in revival meetings, and joined one of the churches holding such a revival. Thirty-one of the seventy churches held or united in thirty such meetings, one being a union meeting of two churches. Pastors conducted fifteen meetings, in three of which a neighboring pastor or evangelist a.s.sisted. Fourteen meetings were held by visiting clergymen. The meetings were well attended, extending from seven to thirty-five days, the average meeting lasting thirteen days.