Large Tasks Awaiting Real Leadership
While there are some small men with little training serving churches under the above conditions, there are also thousands of other churches striving to do God’s will in the service of men, many of them with earnest, able pastors. These men usually win the respect and confidence of their community and are given great opportunity as community builders when their leadership proves equal to the task. As the new rural civilization has developed, the title Country Minister has become once more a title of honor, just as the term Country Gentleman has again come to its own. In the readjustment of country life to the new agriculture and the new social ideals of cooperation, a new and brighter day has dawned for the country church. It is a day of new prosperity and of widening service.
This means a new opportunity for the right sort of a country minister sufficient to claim the life service of strong men. In fact, the task of readjustment is too difficult for any but strong men. Broken-down ministers, or men who have failed in the city, must not look to the country parsonage to-day as a refuge from toil or a temporary harbor for repairs. The insistent needs of the Kingdom of God in the country to-day demand strong, efficient men, specifically trained for country service and thoroughly acquainted with country folks and their life needs. We must have a permanently loyal country ministry for life, men who plan to devote their lives to rural redemption.
The Modern Type of Country Minister
College men of earnest spirit, who have determined to consecrate their lives to any life mission to which they believe God has called them, must listen to the call of the country church. The very difficulty of the task will challenge their interest and their courage. Would they know exactly the type of leadership the country church to-day requires? Let them study word by word this splendid description by Dr. Butterfield, unequalled in its clear analysis:
“The country church wants men of vision, who see through the incidental, the small and the transient, to the fundamental, the large, the abiding issues that the countryman must face and conquer.
“She wants practical men who seek the mountain top by the obscure and steep paths of daily toil and real living, men who can bring things to pass, secure tangible results.
“She wants original men, who can enter a human field, poorly tilled, much grown to brush, some of it of diminished fertility, and by new methods can again secure a harvest that will gladden the heart of the Great Husbandman.
“She wants aggressive men, who do not hesitate to break with tradition, who fear God more than prejudice, who regard institutions as but a means to an end, who grow frequent crops of new ideas and dare to winnow them with the flails of practical trial.
“She wants trained men who come to their work with knowledge and with power, who have thought long and deeply upon the problems of rural life, who have hammered out a plan for an active campaign for the rural church.