Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

"Proportion of strong and weak Churches.

"More than one fifth, therefore, of all the churches connected with these denominations may be counted as very weak, none of them having more than twenty-five members, and the average falling considerably below that number. Nearly one fourth may be counted as weak, their membership ranging between twenty-five and fifty; and these, taken together with those that are weaker yet, constitute nearly forty-three per cent. of the whole. More than two thirds of all the churches do not contain over one hundred members. Those that exceed one hundred are about thirty-one per cent., and those that exceed two hundred are not quite eleven per cent. of the entire number.

"Present Supply of Ministers inadequate.

"The whole number of ministers in these three denominations is 6150. The number of pastors and stated supplies (errors excepted) is 4336, leaving 1814 to be classed as without charge, as professors, teachers, editors, secretaries, etc.

"The number of churches in the three denominations whose membership exceeds fifty is some five hundred less than the number of pastors and stated supplies. If, therefore, each of the five hundred men remaining after the largest churches were supplied were to take two of the smaller churches, more than sixteen hundred churches would still be left destitute; and if allowance be made for those not reporting, this number must be taken as exceeding two thousand. Probably none of these contain more than thirty-five members.

"Deficiency due to Divisions.

"Now we need a thousand-fold increase of our effective force in the great harvest-field of the world; but have we any reason to expect that the Lord of the harvest will hear our cry for laborers, and raise them up indefinitely, in order to meet wants unnecessarily, nay, wickedly created by our divisions? Would a spendthrift son expect to prevail with an indulgent father to administer to his necessities on the plea or the confession that he had squandered his former bounty, and, moreover, was intending to make a similar use of what he then solicited? The responsibility rests upon Christians of no one name, and it would seem that if the people of God every where could but have a full realization of the heart-rending inadequacy of all means yet employed for the conversion of the world, or of the utter hopelessness of ever meeting the vast want under such a waste of power, the work of economical adjustment would at once and earnestly commence, and also a new consecration—that the evangelization of the world may be carried forward upon a scale commensurate with the providential openings for missionary effort.

"That would be, indeed, a glorious revolution which should bring the true disciples of Christ every where to this position—to a consecration that should keep nothing back from the Lord, to a heaven-appointed economy in the adjustment of forces, a condensation of churches in the same neighborhood, till the combined body could support a pastor, furnish him with all needed facilities for the prosecution of his work, and, at the same time, open to him an adequate field of labor. All supernumerary ministers in a given locality would thus be set loose for effort where men are perishing for lack of vision. Then Apollos would not interfere with Paul when he planted, nor Paul with Apollos when he watered, nor would both either plant or water at the same point or time, provided one could do the work.

"Divisions unnecessary.

"But it is possible that some, calling to mind the large number of weak congregations at the East—where denominational rivalry is less active than at the West—may claim that this feebleness is but a part of the necessary imperfection of human arrangements; that we must always have the poor with us, and that it is not the sectarianism of the West which so reduces our churches. It were sufficient to suggest, in reply, that the weak churches in the older states are found where the communities are weak, in barren or uncultivated districts, or in regions depopulated by emigration, while a large proportion of the feeble churches of the West are in populous, vigorous, growing communities, where nothing but irreligion or division could keep the congregations from being numerous, and where nothing less than the combination of the two could keep them so small as they are. Yonder are three debilitated churches struggling for existence against each other. Is it necessary to ask whether, if they were joined in one, and were with one heart and voice contending for the kingdom of God, the Christian strength of that community would not be greater?