The country minister’s influence is still further reduced because his term of service is short—usually but a year or two, rarely three years. Moreover, his efforts are commonly divided among several communities and thus are spread too thin to produce results. Add to that the fact that in each community the people whom he serves are intermingled with the parishioners of ministers of other denominations. Under these circumstances how can he become efficient in community service, and how can he get to know the people of his charge? Ordinarily he does not even attempt it. Under present conditions the country minister who does, generally accomplishes little and wears himself into discouragement.
(5) Rearrangement of Circuits
The old circuit system under which many of the denominations developed their work and which is now the system employed in nearly all the larger denominations in the State, was of undoubted value in the beginning of their work in pioneer days. But like many other efficient methods of early times it has ceased to be the best method for present needs, in the form in which we now find it at work. This is true except in a few instances where it appears in such a modified form as to be adaptable to present conditions.
Under the circuit system it has often been accepted as a policy by church officials that every church must have a minister and every minister a church. The advantages accruing both to the churches and ministers from a reasonably cautious and not too consistent application of such a rule are obvious. But failure to use such caution and too great insistence on its universal application too often have resulted in the employment of unequipped and uneducated ministers and sometimes even of men whose character was questionable, which in turn, has helped to bring about a low standard of pay for the minister. The pay of the skilled has fallen to that of the unskilled, and the total result has been to cheapen the ministry. The standard among farmers for the support of both church and minister, therefore, has fallen low. We must have a greatly modified system or a better system before the ministry can be better paid.
Under the circuit system as now applied in Ohio the churches too often provide for but little else than preaching. Even the Sunday school, one of the most hopeful and valuable kinds of church work, is hampered by it, for this work needs the leadership of a trained ministry, which the present circuit system tends to prevent. The minister with a circuit can rarely attend the services of his Sunday schools, and the task of promoting the Sunday school work during the week in the several communities of his charge is usually too arduous for him.
In times past it has been held commendable for a denomination to establish one of its churches in every community, regardless of the number of churches already there. By making use of the present circuit system, it has been possible to establish and after a fashion to maintain a church almost anywhere. Hence the present unfortunate multiplication of churches.
When rural communities are overchurched, as under the working of this plan in Ohio most of them are, competition between them necessarily results not in the survival of the fit, but in the continued existence of an excessive number of bloodless, moribund churches, whose energies are almost entirely exhausted in the mere effort to keep alive.
When the circuit system is adopted by more than one competing denomination in a field as it is in Ohio it helps to perpetuate interchurch competition. When one adopts it all others must, or retire from the field. It cannot be held that the resulting competition helps to make more Christians, or that it tends to develop character or community life. On the contrary, it reduces both the power of the church as a whole and the influence of the individual churches for personal righteousness and community welfare. Then, as the churches under the competitive system grow weaker, they must be yoked in larger circuits. So far has the practice gone that in one circuit in Ohio there are actually ten churches.
A variation of this system is found in certain Holy Roller churches where an undefined number of churches together depend for their leadership on a group of itinerant revivalists. Frequent or occasional seasons of revival services often constitute the sole activity of these churches, yet because of the weakness of the latter they are succeeding or have succeeded in crowding out many churches of the older denominations. There is a clear instance of this in the western half of Pike County, where nearly all the churches are abandoned excepting those of the Holy Rollers—a striking example of reverse selection or the survival of the unfit.
The movement for the conservation and improvement of rural life has no greater enemy than the misused circuit system. Not only does it weaken the churches, but it necessarily discourages the development of the community and of community life. With his efforts divided among three or more different communities, his parishioners mingled with members of competing churches, the country minister cannot hope for the coöperation necessary to effective leadership. His success in any work for the community, because it would add prestige to his church, as a rule is not desired by the members of other denominations. The entire circuit situation as it works to-day in the region here under investigation whatever may be its value elsewhere tends to make the modern program of successful churches entirely impracticable.