Chapter VII: Rural Christian Forces (2)

This Association work is no experiment. For years it has been widely successful in many states and is promoted by the State and International Committees on scientifically sound principles, based on a close study of rural sociology and tried out by years of patient endeavor by well-trained men who are specialists in their field. It is one of the most promising just now of all the various lines of Young Men's Christian Association work; and it is certainly as much needed as any branch of their work in the cities.

_Working Principles_

The County Work aims to save the country boy and develop him for Christian citizenship, not by the use of costly equipment, but by personality, trained, consecrated leadership; not by institutions but by friendship; not by highly-paid local secretaries, but by enlisting and training volunteer service; not by patronage and coddling but by arousing and directing the boy's own active interests; always remembering that by the grace of God the redemptive forces in each community must be the resident forces.

It is good policy to make the county the geographical unit of this effective work. The county is the social unit politically, industrially, commercially; it should also be the unit of religious endeavor, particularly in rural sections. A county-wide campaign for righteousness under the direction of a trained Association Secretary, usually a college trained man and an expert in rural life, is a great thing for any county. Every rural county in the land ought to be organized speedily to get the benefit of this business-like modern plan of Christian service. The difficulty is to discover, enlist and train the necessary leaders.

_A Campaign of Rural Leadership_

It is doubtful if there is any organization working for the betterment of rural life which has a better chance to serve the interests of the whole countryside to-day than the Rural Young Men's Christian Association. It represents a united Christendom, being representative of all the churches and their right arm in social service. In a county where there may be twenty-nine varieties of churches, few of them strong enough for any aggressive work, and most of them mutually jealous and suspicious, the Rural Association Secretary comes in as a neutral, is soon welcome in churches of every name and gradually gains great influence. He is possibly a better trained man than most pastors in the county, and as he quietly develops his work they discover that he is a man who knows rural life, keeps abreast of the best agricultural science, is an expert in rural sociology and in the psychology of adolescence. He rapidly gathers the facts about the history and the present needs of the different townships in the county and constructs a policy for developing a finer local life, not only among the boys but the entire community.

If he stays long enough in the place, and is a man of the right sort, he speedily grows into a position of recognized leadership, gaining the confidence of the working farmers as a man of good sense, and of the professional men because he understands scientifically the underlying needs of the locality. Quite likely he is able to bring the ministers together in a county ministerial union of which he is apt to be made secretary or executive; and in some places he is able to federate most of the churches of many sects into a working federation for the religious and moral welfare of the county. Because he is a neutral, not working for the aggrandizement of any special church, though vitally interested in all and consecrated to the larger interests of the whole Kingdom of God, this man has the best possible leverage on the country church situation. He can advise weak churches about their difficulties; and when two or more local churches ought to be gradually united, he can often tactfully and successfully bring them together, as no other individual or group of individuals could possibly do. He can with the grace of God develop the spirit of cooperation among the people without which any hasty or mechanical plan for union of diverse churches would be but a temporary experiment.

Under the direction of his County Committee, which includes some fifteen to twenty of the most influential Christian men of the county, this Association Secretary is often able to set scores of local leaders at work and train them for the special service to which they are best adapted; thus utilizing local leadership which has been largely going to waste through modest self-depreciation.

Gradually the office of the rural secretary becomes a sort of clearing house for all the popular interests and organizations in the county,--churches, schools, granges, farmers' institutes, boards of trade, medical societies, Sunday schools, boys' clubs of every sort, athletic clubs, civic associations and village improvement societies. Thus these various agencies are brought together for cooperative service of the countryside, learning to work together harmoniously with modern methods of efficiency.[36]

_The County Work of the Young Women's Christian Association_

So successful has been the work of the Rural Young Men's Christian Association, it has encouraged the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association to begin Christian work among women and girls in the country villages. There is unquestionably a wide field and a great usefulness for this branch of the Young Women's Association work. It ought to be rapidly promoted and doubtless will be as fast as consecrated young women can be trained for it and their challenge met by people of wealth to consecrate their money for this purpose. Efficiency would be gained by working in practical union with the rural Young Men's Christian Associations.

_The Primacy of the Church in the Country_

In all these activities it must be borne in mind that the Young Men's and the Young Women's Christian Associations are but auxiliaries of the church. The secretary is frankly a servant of the church, of all the churches. The main reason for emphasizing these agencies for rural redemption is the present divided condition of religious forces in the country. Where the churches are well united and cooperative; or better, where the community has but one church, a strong, influential organization, there is no valid reason why the church itself may not rightly assume the position of leadership in all matters of community welfare. Community building is the great work of the church after all; developing and strengthening the vital issues of life in order that the community may become an efficient part of the great Kingdom of God. As rural Christendom becomes better united and better socialized, the church will come to its own again, as in the old days when it was the only outstanding institution in the community and rightly assumed the effective leadership in all matters vitally affecting the welfare of the people.

Here again, the problem is mainly one of personality. Given adequate leadership, the church can accomplish wonders as a genuine community builder. But a gun must be a hundred times heavier than the projectile it fires; else it will burst the gun. Small, petty personalities cannot hope for large results in real community leadership. The church needs masterful men, men of power and vision, ministers thoroughly trained for the work of their profession and men whose hearts are kept tender and humble by the spirit of the indwelling God.

V. Types of Rural Church Success.

_Some Real Community Builders_

With so many faithful men in country parsonages to-day who have seen the vision of broader service and permanent success, it would be invidious to suggest a list of names. It will be fully as safe to suggest something of their program. These prophets of the new day for the rural church are doing two distinct types of work. Some are making the village church the center of outreaching endeavor for the redemption of the surrounding country; others are vitalizing the church in the open country as a center of vital religion and broad service.

In Cazenovia, New York, for instance, we find a splendid instance of the effectiveness of the village church in overcoming its handicap with the people outside the village. In most places there is a two-mile dead-line for religion. Outside that limit the church's influence is seldom felt. But here we find a pastor who has by friendly evangelism in school houses miles from his church, supported by social methods for enriching the daily life of the people, won scores of people to his Lord and Master, and greatly enlarged his church membership and its usefulness. There are many places where similar success is won by the same kind of earnest, efficient work by pastors and their laymen. Unquestionably the village church has a regal opportunity, as great as ever in the past.

_The Church in the Open Country_

There are many people, however, who doubt the possible success of the church in the open country. Some are advising concentrating efforts in the villages and centralizing church work there on the plan of the centralization of the public schools. In some places this may be wise; but to deny that a church in the open country can be successful is to fly in the face of the facts.

Given an adequate equipment for service, and a well-trained, tactful pastor who knows and loves country folks and lives with his people, splendid results may be expected. A church on the open prairie at Plainfield, Illinois, six miles from a railroad, has become famous in recent years as an illustration of real success in community building. City people would say there is no community, for there is none in sight. But the people for miles around are bound vitally to that church as to their home, for it not only has served their many needs and won their personal appreciation and love, but it has set many of them at work in a worth-while cooperative service.

Ten years ago that community had an unsuccessful church of the old type, gathering a small congregation from week to week but with little influence outside. No one had joined the church for five years. The last minister had resigned in discouragement, with six months' arrears in salary. The "New Era Club," a mile away, was wooing all the young people away from the church to its frequent dancing parties; while the church offered no substitute, and helplessly grew weaker year by year.

But in the past ten years a fine modern church building has been built, with fourteen rooms for all purposes, and paid for in cash; the manse has been remodeled; the pastor's salary nearly doubled; about as much given to benevolences as in the half-century preceding; the Sunday school has grown to 300 members; the people from miles away flock to the preaching services, the lectures, concerts and socials; large numbers have been added to the church; while the "New Era Club" has been crumbling into ruin, simply starved out by religious competition! There has not been a dance there for eight or nine years, though the pastor has never preached against it.

This all began with an old-fashioned singing school which gathered together the young people socially at the church; and from this simple beginning, other plans developed which met the needs of the people and won their loyalty. Though the pastor modestly disclaims special merit or ability, the man who cannot only keep his preaching services at a high standard of success and keep up a system of cottage prayer meetings throughout his parish as centers of the spiritual life, and also gather over 2,000 people for the annual community plowing contest (more than double the population of the whole township) must be a personality to be reckoned with! There is, however, nothing in the situation or in the program of successful achievement which could not be duplicated elsewhere in thousands of purely rural communities, given the same kind of intelligent leadership and consecrated cooperation.

_Oberlin: The Prince of Country Ministers_

With all the resources of our modern church life, it is doubtful if there has ever been a country pastor more strikingly efficient or broadly influential than Johann Friedrich Oberlin, who died nearly a century ago. He was pastor of four rural parishes in the Vosges Mountains for over sixty years and became the most beloved and influential person in the entire section. He was a graduate of Strassburg University and declined a city pulpit in order to accept the most needy and difficult field of service which he could find. The people of Ban-de-la-Roche to whom he came were a rude mountain folk isolated from civilization; but since Oberlin's work of transformation they have been a prosperous, happy people with many of the marks of culture.

Seven years before his death, Pastor Oberlin received the gold medal of the Legion of Honor from the King of France, "for services which he has rendered in his pastorate during fifty-three years, employing constant efforts for the amelioration of the people, for zeal in the establishment of schools and their methods of instruction, and the many branches of industry and the advancement of agriculture and the improvement of roads, which have made that district flourishing and happy." The National Agricultural Society gave him a gold medal for "prodigies accomplished in silence in this almost unknown corner of the Vosges,... in a district before his arrival almost savage," and into which he had brought "the best methods of agriculture and the purest lights of civilization."

In the early stages of his remarkable career his narrow-minded people opposed every step he took in the direction of community progress. They resented his doing anything but preaching. When he proposed that they build a passable road over the mountains to civilization they jeered at the idea. But he shouldered his pick and began the task, and ere long they joined him. Together they built the first real highway and bridged the mountain stream. Out of a salary of $200 a year he paid most of the expense of two new schoolhouses, because the people refused to help. The other villages, however, saw the improvement and built their own. He gradually revolutionized the educational methods, and even in the course of years, succeeded in supplanting the mountain dialect with Parisian French. He studied and then taught agriculture, and horticulture, introducing new crops, new vegetables (including the potato), and new fruits; even reclaiming the impoverished soil by scientific methods which gradually won the respect of even the dullest of his people.

In all his reforms he kept his religious aim and purpose foremost and his church never suffered but constantly grew in influence and popular appreciation. Gradually he became the honored pastor, the "Protestant saint," of the whole mountainside. Lutherans, Catholics and Calvinists attended his services. They would even partake of the sacrament together and he furnished them with three kinds of bread, to suit their diverse customs, wafers for the Romanists and bread leavened for the Calvinists and unleavened for the Lutherans; and thus they lived together in peace!

_The Force of Oberlin's Example_

Few modern ministers perhaps will need to follow in detail the example of Johann Friedrich Oberlin, but the sacrificial spirit and working principles of his life ministry are as necessary as ever. As President K. L. Butterfield states so well, "Rural parishes in America that present the woeful conditions of the Ban-de-la-Roche in 1767 may not be common, though of that let us not be too sure. The same underground work that Oberlin did may not need doing by every rural clergyman. Schools are busy in every parish. Forces of socialization and cooperation are at work. The means of agricultural training are at hand. Yet the underlying philosophy of Oberlin's life work must be the fundamental principle of the great country parish work of the future. Oberlin believed in the unity of life, the marriage of labor and learning. He knew that social justice, intelligent toil, happy environment are bound up with the growth of the spirit. They act and react upon one another.

More than a century ago this great man labored for a lifetime as a country minister. He knew all the souls in his charge to their core. He loved them passionately. He refused to leave them for greater reward and easier work. He studied their problems. He toiled for his people incessantly. He transformed their industry and he regenerated their lives. He built a new and permanent rural civilization that endures to this day unspoiled. The parishes about the little village of Waldersbach thus became a laboratory in which the call of the country parish met a deep answer of success and peace."[37]

TEST QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VII

1.--How important do you consider the country church as an agency for rural betterment?

2.--How important might it become if it lived up to its opportunity?

3.--What four stages do you find in the development of the rural church in America? Describe this evolution.

4.--Contrast the old and the new ideals in country church work.

5.--What is the main business of a church in the country community and what do you regard as the real test of its efficiency?

6.--Describe what you think is the broad function of the church in serving the rural community.

7.--If the church meets its opportunity in this broad way what will it gain by it?

8.--What do you think about the church's responsibility for spiritual leadership?

9.--Take some country church of your own acquaintance and tell what you think it ought to be doing to build up its community.

10.--Name the chief reasons why many rural churches are so weak and ineffective.

11.--Make a list of factors which would help to make these churches successful.

12.--If local prosperity is at low ebb or the farmers are unsuccessful, what can the church people do about it? Illustrate what has been done.

13.--Why should the church not merely serve its own membership but the whole community?

14.--Why is sectarian competition particularly bad for the country sections?

15.--How can a country village get rid of its surplus churches?

16.--What can a church federation accomplish in a community? In a county? In a state?

17.--Why is a permanent resident pastor so necessary to country church success? What must be done to make this to any extent possible?

18.--What should be the "minimum wage" for a country pastor and how can this be secured? Illustrate how this has been accomplished near Cleveland.

19.--Should denominational home mission boards help pay the salary of their ministers in over-churched communities? What can be done about this?

20.--Draw a rough practical plan of a modern church building costing not over $10,000, and suited to rural needs.

21.--Suggest a practical plan of work for laymen in the country church.

22.--Discuss the religious usefulness of a community social survey. What local facts would you try to gather?

23.--What do you think of the opportunity and importance of Sunday-school work in the country?

24.--Why is the Bible particularly well adapted to people living in the country?

25.--Why are rural Sunday schools often so unsuccessful?

26.--Discuss possible improvements and suggest how you would accomplish them.

27.--What do you think of the general plan of the Rural Young Men's Christian Association work?

28.--Tell how it is helping the country boy.

29.--Discuss the working principles of this "County Work."

30.--Describe the broad opportunities for community Christian service which come to the County Work secretary.

31.--What Christian work in country villages needs to be done by the Young Women's Christian Association?

32.--Why do you find so often to-day a "two-mile dead line for religion"?

33.--What work in the surrounding country can be in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.

34.--Do you believe in the permanent usefulness of the church in the open country?

35.--Tell the story of modern country church success in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.

36.--What were the secrets of the success of that particular church in the open country? Is there any reason why 10,000 other rural churches cannot learn to do the same?

37.--Who was Johann Friedrich Oberlin?

38.--Discuss his remarkable life work as a country pastor. What do you think of his rural church program?

39.--Make a list of the successful country churches and ministers you have known and the chief reasons for their success.

40.--Describe the ideal country church of the future.

CHAPTER VIII

COUNTRY LIFE LEADERSHIP