THINGS YET TO BE DONE
Their name is legion. Everything is to be done. Only a beginning has been made. Nothing is finished. What has been accomplished is only a prophecy of the larger and completer work that lies before us in the future. Religious and community work is not mechanical. You cannot finish it up and store it away as the carpenter finishes a box, or the housewife a garment. Life is a development, a growth, and those who deal with life must always be content with beginnings. “Nothing that has life is ever finished.” Life in its larger unfolding and its fuller meaning must always be in the future. A life that is finished and complete would better end, and a community that has reached perfection should be translated to another sphere. We must ever be content to spend our labor upon beginnings, thankful for such fruitage as may appear from time to time. The real ingathering must always be in the future. What has been accomplished in the Larger Parish gives us confidence in the methods employed, and encourages us to expect larger things from the better and completer application of those and similar methods in the days to come.
In may be well to mention some of the things that have not as yet been fully done, but that we hope to see accomplished in the Larger Parish in the future.
1. The first and most important aim of this work, and of all church work, is to bring people into the kingdom of God. All social and community work must be subordinate to this and lead up to it. The Church must be something more than a social settlement. I still hold to the old-fashioned idea that men need to be saved, and that the only salvation that there can be for them is found in loyalty to Jesus Christ. While this salvation is a matter of the spirit, affecting one’s standing with God and his relation to the great eternal realities, it also affects his standing with men and his relation to society. And here comes in all the humanitarian and community work that is a legitimate and important part of the church’s concern. Community work can never take the place of the work of God’s Spirit in the individual life. To be permanently valuable it must be the result of that work. The kingdom of God embraces the complete ideal, and if we can induce men to live according to the principles of that kingdom, careful attention will be paid to all the work that needs to be done for the community. Therefore the work of the Larger Parish is primarily, though not exclusively, evangelistic. We are trying to lead men to become Christians, not in a narrow sense, but in the large, rich meaning of that word which the teaching of Jesus gives it.
During the three years that we have in review there have been some such results. A goodly number have decided to begin the Christian life and have taken their places in the ranks of the followers of Jesus Christ. We are thankful that the army of the Lord has received so many new recruits. But there are many more who are not as yet willing to enlist. The number of those who are still outside the ranks is greater than of those who are marching under the banner of the visible Church. Much remains to be done in this direction. The work is far from being complete in this its most vital and important aspect. We have only made a beginning. It will not be finished until every person in all the wide parish is openly and positively arrayed on the side of Christ. At the present rate of progress it looks as if the Church had work laid out for it for a long time to come. It is not in danger of soon running out of material. There is a great work yet to be done in the way of bringing men into the kingdom of God. We hope to keep that always in view—to make it our central aim and our uppermost thought.
2. There needs to be created in the hearts of the people more respect for the Church, a better understanding of its mission, and a fuller appreciation of its work. Many people have mistaken ideas of the Church, and therefore fail to appreciate its work or its purpose. Some regard it simply as a venerable institution that has long had a place in human society. In former times it has done an important work, and still has its value. It is to be honored for its record and still encouraged in a mild and patronizing way. They would not banish the Church—they are not yet quite ready to undertake to conduct human society without it. They tolerate it and perhaps support it in a half-hearted way, but they do not regard it as absolutely essential or its work as vitally important. They do not understand the Church. The Church may be in some measure to blame for this. It has not always understood itself. Its conception of its own mission has been small, narrow, and inadequate, and it was inevitable that no truer or larger impression could be made upon the community. When the Church undertakes to do all for which it is responsible and prosecutes it with the vigor and earnestness that it deserves, the people will begin to understand it better and to appreciate more fully its mission.
Many people regard the Church as an institution to be supported. In common thought this institution, for some reason that may not always appear, has assumed the right to lay the community under tribute for support. Some accept this traditional idea without thinking much about it, while others are in revolt against it. One of the assistant pastors was calling at a house for the first time. The master of the house, when he was introduced, said, “Oh, another preacher! Well, I suppose they all have to be supported.” And he was not the first representative of the Church that has met with such an indignity.
Here again the Church may be at least partially to blame. It has too often regarded its office as that of preying upon the community as well as praying for it. It has not always been careful to give value received.
It is our purpose to make the Church a necessity in the community. Its good works, its efficiency as an element of power in everything that is for the improvement and uplifting of the people, should be so great and so evident that no one can reasonably call them in question. That is one of the things that needs to be done, and that by the method of the Larger Parish we hope to accomplish. We propose that the Church shall have such a spirit of helpfulness, that it shall be so wise and practical in laying out its work, so energetic and aggressive in prosecuting it, that all shall recognize it as a potent and most blessed force—an institution that they gladly support because of its practical value. Some progress has been made in this direction. The Church has gained immensely in the respect of the people since it began the work of the Larger Parish. The people can see that it is really doing something.
3. There needs to be created a stronger and more universal community spirit. The tendency in the country toward isolation and independence is especially strong. Each farmer is separate from every other. He lives alone, somewhat like a baron in his castle in old feudal times, sufficient for himself, without much necessity of borrowing, or thought of lending. Living in such conditions it is quite natural that he should grow selfish, and should come to think largely if not exclusively of his own individual interests. He is in danger of overlooking the fact that society is an organism, and he is a part of it; that he has duties and obligations to the general public; that his life cannot be complete if it is lived alone; that he owes something to the community at large, and that he must get something from it if he would really be a man, do a man’s work, and fill a man’s place. He must come to see that the public good means private advantage, and that when he cuts himself off from others and thinks only of his own individual interests he is following a foolish and suicidal policy.
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THE BENZONIA CHURCH
This community spirit needs to be carefully cultivated, and that work has been going on in the Larger Parish. The community spirit has been growing. The people are more interested in one another and in those things that are undertaken for the public good than they formerly were. But there is still much to be done in this respect. Not all the people are yet able to look over the narrow boundaries of their own possessions and see their neighbors’ needs. Not all grasp the idea of the solidarity of society. But this spirit is growing and there will be larger fruitage in the coming days.
4. There needs to be more team work among the people, more coöperation in carrying out the schemes that are for the public good. When all the people take hold together, there is scarcely anything that needs to be done that cannot be accomplished. A single individual is comparatively powerless, but a common movement in any community is bound to succeed. One of the foremost services to any community is to unite its forces and bring the people to work together heartily and enthusiastically in some good cause.
The work of the Larger Parish has been useful in this direction. The Team Work Committees of the neighborhood clubs have this for their object—to lead out in anything in which it is desirable for the people to move together. It is easier to bring the people to unite their efforts now than it was three years ago, but much more remains to be done. The goal has not yet been reached. The effective team work that we have seen is a prophecy of that completer coöperation in all good things that we hope and expect to see in the coming days.
5. In some way more variety should be brought into the lives of country people. Farm life should become one of the most attractive and interesting spheres of activity. Its freedom, its independence, its close contact with nature, should give to it for multitudes a compelling charm. It would seem that a strong current of human interest could be made to flow from the crowded and unwholesome conditions of the city to the open country, where the fresh breezes play and the flowers bloom. At present it is not so. The stream flows in the opposite direction and every year the city swallows up much of the best blood of the country. It is the city that attracts, and the country that repels. This can be explained very largely by the isolated and monotonous character of country life.
The only way by which this movement can be checked or reversed is to give more variety to rural life; to break up its monotony and to introduce into it those intellectual and social pleasures and employments that are a necessary part of a healthful and contented life. Young people crave variety, they must get together, they must have some kind of amusements, some form of recreation. If they cannot find it on the farm, they will go to the city where it is supplied in lavish abundance but often in objectionable forms.
It has been the object of the work of the Larger Parish to supply this need of country life. It has provided and promoted frequent opportunities for the people to come together in a social way. The Sunday services established in so many places have not only served as opportunities of worship, but also of neighborly intercourse and of the interchange of friendly greetings. The neighborhood clubs have been a kind of social and literary clearing-house for the community, affording many a pleasant and profitable evening and providing something wholesome to think of and to plan for during the day. The Ladies’ Aid Societies have brought the women together, in projects and accomplishments of common interest, relieving the weeks of monotonous toil with forms of coöperative fellowship. Much more needs to be done to impart interest and attraction to life in the country, and it is something to which the Church, in its desire to minister to the whole man, may very appropriately give its thought and effort.
6. Machinery seems to be a necessity in all kinds of work. Nothing can be done without a method, an organization, a machine—some kind of an instrument to facilitate the process. But the machine is never properly an end in itself. Sometimes it is made an end, but no farmer could be satisfied with a reaper that did not cut the grain, however beautiful and well-made it might be or however smoothly it might run. Nevertheless some churches seem to be satisfied with the smooth running of the machinery, even though the results of it all are very meager.
The primary object of the work of the Larger Parish is to help the people and to serve them in a religious and social way, not to promote a denomination, to build up a church, to perfect an organization, or to construct or to operate machinery of any kind. But in order to help the people and serve their best interests efficiently, some machinery, some organization, is necessary. Our thought is to supply it when the necessity comes, but not before. When it is needed it must be invented or discovered, or in some way brought into the service. Certain methods have been introduced. There have been employed some forms of organization, some machinery has been set in operation. Some things we have tried, that did not work satisfactorily and they had to be discarded. Some of the methods that seem to be successful at present may not always continue to work so well, and they will have to be exchanged for others. We must ever keep in view the prime object for which we are working—to serve the people and to uplift the community life—and to that object we must adapt our methods and adjust our machinery.
If we do the work that needs to be done in the coming days we shall need a true and unwavering purpose, a clear eye to discern the situation, a calm and correct judgment to fit the method to the work, and above all, the constant leading of the Holy Spirit. The Larger Parish is not a method, or organization, or machine, that one can secure and put in operation and then the work is done. It is a vision—an ideal—that must be a living reality in the soul, and then must be wrought out in actual life in the best way possible.