THE OPENING CHURCH MISSIONS.
BY SECRETARY F. P. WOODBURY.
The Eureka Church-Arbor, shown below, sheltered the opening service of the new plantation missions in Southern Georgia. The people came under the shadows of the piney woods from every quarter. The first mission church was organized under this rude booth. There the meetings continued until the cold and rainy months of winter. Now, by the help of a grant from the Church Building Society, a small church building will speedily become the home of a beneficent church and school work.
THE EUREKA CHURCH-ARBOR.
This church of the forest took its start from the earnest convictions of its pastor, Rev. J. B. Fletcher. After long study of the New Testament, with the help of few other books than his tattered Greek lexicon, he resigned his ecclesiastical connection because he had found, as he thought, the free church polity on Bible principles. His discovery was substantially the Congregational system. He called his first church "Eureka." It now has nine other churches associated in the same work. A mission preacher, a devoted man residing near, a man who is highly respected by all the people, has immediate charge of the Eureka work and holds the Sunday-school and other services.
A PASTOR'S HOME.
The abodes of many of the plantation preachers are as simple and humble as those of their people. We give an illustration of one of these homes. Usually there is a division into two or perhaps three rooms. Sometimes a small lean-to is built at the side or end, for use as kitchen. The chimney, erected on the outside, is often constructed of clay bound with sticks. It starts in a broad fireplace of stone, which warms the whole building. Some of these cabins have small glass windows; others of them have only openings for windows, with wooden shutters. In such dwellings there reside vast numbers of the plantation preachers, and some of our own mission preachers, at the early stages of mission work in the back country.
MARIETTA CHURCH AND PARSONAGE.
The picture given herewith of the church, parsonage, and school, in Marietta, Georgia, illustrates very many of the American Missionary Association church missions in the South. A neat church, a plain but comfortable house, with its adjoining school-room, are the type of the improving influences in both religious and educational service, which we seek to carry among these shadowed and suffering millions.
In both the Carolinas, as well as in Georgia, there is an awakening in the hearts of the colored people, both in the towns and in the country, for a better church life. This is inciting movements from the centralized forms of church government, with their arbitrary methods and hard taxation, into independency. Often the poverty of the people prevents their attaining anything beyond present and scanty shelter for their new free churches. The accompanying photograph is an illustration of such a chapel among the plantations of South Carolina.
A SOUTH CAROLINA CHURCH.
In very many parts of the plantation South, the very idea of a church free from outside control and allied to education and morality, is utterly unknown. Neither education nor morality form any constituent element of the common church life. Their introduction is looked upon with suspicion by the masses, and is met by hostility in every possible form of persecution by many of the old-time preachers and their personal adherents.
SCHOOL IN ANDERSONVILLE, GA
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Nothing more contributes to the introduction of better forms of church life than do those mission schools which awaken the desire for something better in religion than the senseless and corrupt "old-time" ways. Such a school as that in Andersonville, Ga., is the initiative of a church mission. School education is of little advantage unless it is linked with moral training; and there is no moral training comparable with that of a pure and true Christian church. Our mission school teachers call for and need the re-enforcement of gospel preaching on the Lord's day, and the faithful work of a pastor during the week. A great deal of hard work in the school would be frittered away and lost without the distinctive church work which must supplement, and confirm it. To send the pupils back into the Egyptian darkness of most plantation and country churches is, for vast numbers, to throw away all that has been done for them. That they feel this is shown by the frequent and earnest appeals which come from them to have virtuous and educated ministers sent for the starting of better churches among their homes.
SCHOOL AT KING'S MOUNTAIN
While this is the narrow and local influence of our smaller schools, it is also the broader and deeper influence of our larger schools, like that at All Healing, N. C. (King's Mountain P. O.) Here the religious life is intensified. A number of devoted teachers supplement each other's work. A unique Congregational church has been formed, its pastor being the principal of the school, who adds this work to all his other services. The influence of the constant religious work done in this church-school and school-church is felt a hundred miles around. Young men and young women go out with higher ideals, and they awaken a demand in their home neighborhoods for both religion and education of a higher character. It is not too much to say that such work as that of Miss Cathcart and her fellow teachers at King's Mountain tends toward a general advance of the communities from which her pupils come.
HAGAN COUNC'L.
In Georgia, after the Eureka church movement was noised about, Mr. Fletcher received and now receives calls from every side, chiefly from the plantation people. At Piney Grove, a preaching station was begun in an old dwelling house, and a little church of twelve members is the result. At Shady Grove, ten miles away, a small church building is going up for the brotherhood there. The ground was given and the work of building is carried on by a respectable colored farmer of the neighborhood, who with many of his neighbors welcomes a church fellowship which stands for education and pure religion. At Alford, in the adjoining county, there is now a membership of thirty-two, for whose use a comfortable church building is furnished by the white people. This, with Nellwood as an out-station, will probably soon receive an excellent pastor, trained in our Congregational ways and principles. A beginning has been made at Portal, twelve miles beyond. In the next county westward, the church work began at Swainsboro with twenty-nine members, at Kemp with seventeen members, near Garfield with thirteen members, and at Pilgrim with twenty-three members.
Word comes to us that Mr. Fletcher, who is covering three counties in his work, has lost his faithful horse. This quite disables him from service. His fields lie at distances which make walking impossible, being from ten to fifty miles apart. The same day with this loss a member of the family, a young man, was brought home suffering from a broken leg. Are there not means which can reach us in the form of a special gift for the emergency of this faithful pioneer worker? Anything received beyond the immediate stress of need, will be placed to the support of his work.
The Hagan Council, called for the orderly recognition of these poor struggling pioneer churches, met in an old half-ruined school-house, as shown in the picture given herewith. It was a humble place, and they were humble bodies of poor people who thus asked recognition from the Congregational churches of the land. But it is not for us to despise the poor. Has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom? That little group in front of that poor old school-house may become historic as the precursor of a great movement of blessing to millions among the poorest of the poor in our nation.