(3) Better Support
In a large part of Ohio the farmers are able and ready to multiply the amount of money they now contribute for the support of the churches. When it is made clear to them that better pay will bring a better minister, increased support will cheerfully be given. But the farmers will not give more money either for the support of an inferior minister, or to carry out the old program. They will demand their money’s worth, and this the present methods do not, in general, supply. The increased prosperity and consequent ability of the farmers to support the church more liberally is indicated by the fact that the total value of farm property in Ohio increased nearly 60 per cent during the ten-year period from 1900 to 1910.
But it must be remembered that increased support will not be given by the farmers unless the need for it, and what it will bring, is brought forcefully to their attention. This the individual minister cannot do, for to attempt it lays him open to the charge of feathering his own nest. It should be done by a State Federation of Churches or by such organizations as The Ohio Rural Life Association, acting through its own institutes and the farmers’ institutes, through the circulation of its literature, and through the formation of organizations for this purpose in the churches of the different counties. No matter how good work a minister may do, ordinarily he will not be adequately supported unless some special agency does this work.
(4) Better Acquaintance
The present system of circuits entails upon the country minister an enormous waste of time. If a man tries to do the pastoral work which is strictly necessary, he must spend a very large proportion of his working hours in driving to the widely separated points of his various parishes, crossing and recrossing as he goes the lines of travel of other ministers engaged in the same territory upon the same work. That the country minister should be called upon to waste so large a part of his life in this way is shameful because it is bad and inefficient organization, and carries with it an utterly needless loss.
To understand the significance of pastoral calling in a rural community it must be remembered that isolation is as characteristic of the country as congestion is of the cities. A large proportion of rural families look upon a minister who calls frequently as a personal asset of great value. He supplies opportunities not otherwise available for the discussion of matters of general interest or of deep personal concern. He calls attention to the things otherwise forgotten, and brings, or should bring with him, the inestimable advantage of intimate contact with a wise and well-trained mind. Moreover, a man full of good will to all going from house to house, sympathetically trying to help and understand, will inevitably modify the uncharitable and unjust public opinion which either exists or is believed to exist in most rural communities.
Equally effective are the incidental contacts of a minister engaged in community service, such as work with boys, or the promotion of welfare enterprises. Thus engaged he will inevitably get in touch with his parishioners, and supply the needs of individuals and of the community, at least as fully as the minister who devotes most of his working hours to pastoral calls. In such work less time is spent in the long drives or walks between houses which are necessary in systematic calling, while the minister gets to know the men better and bothers them less.
Without pastoral calling and community welfare work, the country minister’s service is sure to be ineffective. But as a matter of fact the country ministers of Ohio for the most part do very little of either. The country people as a rule, receive very few pastoral calls, according to the almost universal testimony of the country ministers themselves as well as that of other persons who live in the country. In Delaware County, for example, a prosperous county in the center of the State, there is an area of 82 square miles, with more than 2,100 people, in which only one minister makes any pastoral calls, and he makes very few. Half the townships of this county have no resident ministers.
Mr. Gill found one township in the north-central section of the State in which the farmers’ families probably had not been called on once in five years. One woman had not received a call from a minister in twelve years. When finally called upon she became a regular and happy church attendant, though she had not been to church since her childhood. Another family was found in the same region whose house no minister had entered for nineteen years. In an Ohio River township, the members of a family testified that a minister had not called on them for twenty-five years, and still others asserted that no minister had ever entered their homes. From the reports of eighteen pastors in one denominational district it appeared that on an average each one made only six calls a year upon non-church members, although these were more than 60 per cent of the people. “Our minister does not know the people of this community” is common testimony everywhere in the country parishes.