“We the rural college student delegates at the American Country Life Association Student Conference believe that the minister who serves in a church which has no right to exist loses respect for his profession and can not do outstanding work; we believe that our denominational boards which appropriate money we give to keep churches going in overchurched communities and which send leadership into such communities are only making people feel that the ideals of Christianity are no higher than those of pagan religions. We would apply the principles and teachings of Jesus Christ. Therefore we recommend:
1. That students preparing to enter the rural ministry refuse to serve charges in overchurched communities.
2. That we, as rural students, do all in our power in our communities and in places of leadership that we may attain to prevent denominational church boards from pouring money and leadership into communities, which is to be used to perpetuate denominational strife that is destroying the religious life of our communities.
3. That we pledge ourselves to endeavor to substitute the principles and teachings of Jesus Christ for narrow denominational creeds and doctrines. In view of this, we shall try to obtain an atmosphere and physical equipment of rural churches, as well as church services themselves, that shall be designed to meet the physical, social, mental, and spiritual needs of the people who worship there, regardless of their denominations.”
The press carries the story that down in Georgia five hundred farmers last season dedicated an acre of land apiece, with all it grew, to the Lord. These pieces of land are spoken of generally in Georgia as the “Lord’s Acres,” and the “Lord’s Acre Plan” is hailed as a hundred per cent. way to finance the country church.
The story goes on to say:
“Farmers in the South are firmly convinced that the Lord’s Acre yields better crops than surrounding land, and that the entire farm of the one giving the acre is more productive than those of his neighbors.”
The Community Church as a Democracy
The community church strikes me as a Lord’s Acre in rural Christendom bearing a crop dedicated to God. And, if I read the returns aright, the comparative yield justifies the belief. It is a church of the people—a democracy in very truth. Any subtle influence that would tend to wash in upon this democracy and wear it down to a dominating set of people or to a group of negligible folk or to a loose aggregation of nondescripts must be walled off with reinforced concrete.
A single type of religious temperament will not govern the range and character of the community church. A constant sort of ideals that appeals only to the seraphic souls or to other minds only in moments of exalted pitch will, by a natural process of elimination, soon reduce the church to a temperamental sect. No, the church is made up of all temperaments: the matter-of-fact, active, and practical; the poetic, sentimental, imaginative; the strenuous; the easy-going; the enthusiastic; the petty; the anxious; the generous, self-denying; the jolly, optimistic; the gloomy, conservative; the militant, crusading; the important; the retiring. Their interests, too—the interests of the whole church are as broad and various as human nature.