But when we are all consciously confronted with the problem of working out the religious life of 30,000,000 of isolated farm people, we wake up to the fact that we occupy a position where cult pride, cult individualism, and cult exclusiveness break down. Then we find ourselves in a dilemma; we must leave the farmers to rot, a thing which is unquestionably abhorrent to our cult; or we must modify our cult, a thing which on the surface seems a sacrilege to do.
But there is a way out of every dilemma; generally, however at the cost of a bit of human pride. The community church shows the various noble church cults one way out of the rural church dilemma.
Read these bold words from a group of fifty young Methodist rural workers penned to bishops:
“To the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church: We the undersigned members of the Methodist Episcopal Church appeal to you to give prayerful consideration to the following suggestions:
1. That the bishops, district superintendents, and other administrative officers of our denomination cordially coöperate with the leaders of other denominations in an effort to so organize rural church geographical units that not more than one Protestant church to every one thousand population shall prevail as a standard.
2. That service to the community rather than to the denomination be the basis on which ministers shall be trained, appointed, and promoted.
3. That the Methodist Episcopal Church take the lead in the give-and-take method with other denominations, even to the extent of encouraging the discontinuance of small, struggling, competing Methodist churches in the interest of rural Christian service to the communities involved.
4. That zeal for service to the entire community and a sympathetic consideration for those whose background and training are non-Methodist shall characterize the efforts of the Methodist Episcopal Church wherever it alone occupies a rural field.
5. That the conference membership of a Methodist Episcopal minister shall not be jeopardized by appointment as pastor of a federated or undenominational church where such a church is required for the largest service to the community.”
Theological students and college students are not to be outdone by their elders in bravery. Read the following document for circulation among the officials of the various church bodies—a document which sounds like the “first call” for the rural community church: