1. The period of pioneer struggle and weakness, through which practically all churches have had to pass.
2. Usually a period of growth and prosperity, sharing the growth of the community; or, if the new town failed to justify its hopes, a period of marking time, under the burden of a building debt.
3. The period of struggle against rural depletion, the rural church meanwhile losing many members to the cities. Apparently a majority of country churches are now in this stage and for many of them it is a noble struggle for efficient survival. Thousands of churches however have succumbed, 1,700 in the single state of Illinois.
4. The ultimate stage of this evolution is the survival of the fittest, the inevitable result of the struggle. Most churches have not yet worked this through, but when they do, it is by readjustment to a redirected rural life. It costs much sacrifice in time and money. It requires the church to study frankly its situation and to surrender cheerfully old notions of success and to broaden its ideals of service.
Old and New Church Ideals
The pioneer type of the circuit-rider church may still be found among the mountains and other neglected or scattered sections of the country. Its ideal of success is very simple: a monthly preaching service when the “elder” makes his rounds; and an annual “protracted meeting” in which the leader “prays the power down” and all hands “get religion,” presumably enough to last them through the year. For this kind of success only three factors seem to be essential: a leader with marked hypnotic power, an expectant crowd ready to respond to his suggestion, and a place to meet. The place may be simply a roof over a pulpit. Results are meager and the same souls, may be, have to be saved next year.
We would not deny the itinerant heroes of pioneer days the credit they deserve for their self-sacrificing labors. Unquestionably they served their generation well, as well as conditions allowed. But most churches have outgrown this low ideal of success. They plan a more continuous work. They desire more than merely emotional results. They appeal to intelligence and to the will and make the culture of Christian character the great objective. Such work is vastly important; but a still higher and broader standard must be raised to-day for country church success.
A few weeks ago there came from an ambitious and active country minister (who evidently wanted a city church) a tabulated, type-written statement of his work for the year. According to widely accepted standards it was evidence of his efficiency and the success of his church. It gave the number of sermons he had preached, the calls he had made, the prayer meetings he had led, the Sunday school sessions attended, the number of conversions and additions to his church membership, the number of families added to his parish roll, the number of people he had baptized, married and buried; the average attendance at all services, the size of his Sunday school, the amount of money raised for church expenses and for benevolences, the sums expended for repairing the property,—for all of which we were asked to praise the Lord. To be sure, it was a rather praiseworthy record, and, on the strength of it, this particular country minister was called to a city church! He will not be any happier there, his salary will not go any farther there, and he will probably have less influence; but he has attained the dignity of a city minister, the goal of many a man’s ambition. Alas that so many of us seem to forget that the Garden of Eden was strictly rural; and that it was only when mankind was driven out of it that they went off and founded cities!
This case is a typical one. We are still too apt to reckon the success of a church in statistics reported in the denominational Yearbook. The book of Numbers is a poor Gospel. Let us not disparage the importance of adding forty people to the church membership, or doubling the size of the Sunday school, or tripling the benevolences, or increasing the congregations. These things are all splendid, every one of them, and indicate a live church and an active, consecrated minister; but they are not ultimate tests of a church’s efficiency.
The Test of Its Efficiency