A well-educated minister who has rendered nine successive years of effective service in one community has been secured as pastor, and there is now a most encouraging prospect of improvement in religious, moral, social, and economic life. The increased giving in Greene Township has also influenced the members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in North Bloomfield. They have pledged $800, instead of the former $500, for the support of their minister, and expect to raise $1,000. Bloomfield Township also hereafter will have the undivided service of a minister.

As a result of this movement in Greene Township, therefore, four of the churches of these two townships will hereafter pay from $2,300 to $2,500 for the support of the ministry instead of $1,100 as hitherto, while two communities will each have the full time service of a resident pastor. The significance of this increase in the money support of the church will be apparent to those who have studied modern rural church problems. The failure of the rural churches to give a living wage, much less a working salary, to their ministers has been one of the most discouraging facts in the rural church situation.

If the three churches of North Bloomfield should federate as those of Greene Township have done, doubtless their people could raise $1,500 for the support of the ministry. Again, if all the churches of both North Bloomfield and Greene should federate it would be possible to employ a single pastor of even higher grade with an assistant. An automobile could be used effectively to cover both townships. In some cases, as in Benzonia, Michigan, one minister with one or more assistants has been able to get better results at less expense. The plan is worth trying.

Aurora

In the year 1913 in the village of Aurora, Portage County, there were two churches, the Congregational and Disciples of Christ. They were small in attendance and membership, and it was hard to get adequate support for the ministers. The usual results of underpaying the ministry were not wanting. As a preliminary step in the improvement of this situation an organization of the men of the churches was formed to promote the general community welfare. As in so many other cases, to bring the churches together in coöperative service to the community was seen to be the only way to secure a vigorous church life for Aurora. That led to the decision to form a federated church under the leadership of one pastor. Under the plan adopted, each church was to keep its denominational relations, contribute to its denominational benevolences, and fulfill all denominational obligations. But in Aurora, as in Greene Township, the people were to work together as in one church.

Owing to circumstances which were purely accidental, for the first year or two the church was not very prosperous and the federation was only partially successful. But after awhile the church began to take on life. While at the beginning it was mutually understood that the arrangement was to be tried for but two years, at the end of that time the desirability of going back to the old way was not even discussed. So far as Mr. Gill could learn in a visit to the community, the one and only one person who still preferred the old way was a woman who had opposed the movement from the start and had always held aloof from it. The opinion of the people is now practically unanimous that both the community and the churches were greatly benefited by the change. The first pastor of this church was of the Disciples, the second a Presbyterian.

Garrettsville

Garrettsville is a prosperous community on the Erie Railroad between Youngstown and Cleveland. Its thousand inhabitants are engaged partly in farming, partly in manufacturing, and partly in supplying the various daily needs of the people. Its good houses, electric lights, paved streets, and trim sidewalks indicate progressiveness and community spirit. Being progressive, the people not merely recognized the undesirability of interchurch competition, but they were able to work out a plan whereby they have largely avoided it.

In April, 1916, there were four churches in the community, or on an average one to 250 persons. The highest salary paid to its minister by any of the churches was $800. Two of the other churches paid much smaller sums and shared the service of their ministers with the churches of other towns, while one of the pastors was the Educational Secretary of a Y. M. C. A. in a town thirty miles away. The spirit of denominational rivalry was in no respect different from that commonly found where there are too many churches. When the pastor of the Congregational Church attempted to organize a branch of the Boy Scouts of America for all the boys in the community, he found that the members of the other churches feared he was attempting to win the boys over to his church. For this reason he thought it best to give up the enterprise.

In 1914, an unsuccessful attempt was made to unite the Congregational Church and the Disciples, and another to unite the Baptist and Congregational churches. In 1916, however, under the influence of the country church movement in Ohio, a successful effort was made to unite all three of them. In the spring of that year these three churches were all without pastors. They decided to hold union services and a Union Sunday school during the summer.