The Making of a Country Parish: A Story

by Harlow S. Mills

VI

THINGS YET TO BE DONE

Their name is legion. Everything is to be done. Only a beginning has been made. Nothing is finished. What has been accomplished is only a prophecy of the larger and completer work that lies before us in the future. Religious and community work is not mechanical. You cannot finish it up and store it away as the carpenter finishes a box, or the housewife a garment. Life is a development, a growth, and those who deal with life must always be content with beginnings. “Nothing that has life is ever finished.” Life in its larger unfolding and its fuller meaning must always be in the future. A life that is finished and complete would better end, and a community that has reached perfection should be translated to another sphere. We must ever be content to spend our labor upon beginnings, thankful for such fruitage as may appear from time to time. The real ingathering must always be in the future. What has been accomplished in the Larger Parish gives us confidence in the methods employed, and encourages us to expect larger things from the better and completer application of those and similar methods in the days to come.

In may be well to mention some of the things that have not as yet been fully done, but that we hope to see accomplished in the Larger Parish in the future.

1. The first and most important aim of this work, and of all church work, is to bring people into the kingdom of God. All social and community work must be subordinate to this and lead up to it. The Church must be something more than a social settlement. I still hold to the old-fashioned idea that men need to be saved, and that the only salvation that there can be for them is found in loyalty to Jesus Christ. While this salvation is a matter of the spirit, affecting one’s standing with God and his relation to the great eternal realities, it also affects his standing with men and his relation to society. And here comes in all the humanitarian and community work that is a legitimate and important part of the church’s concern. Community work can never take the place of the work of God’s Spirit in the individual life. To be permanently valuable it must be the result of that work. The kingdom of God embraces the complete ideal, and if we can induce men to live according to the principles of that kingdom, careful attention will be paid to all the work that needs to be done for the community. Therefore the work of the Larger Parish is primarily, though not exclusively, evangelistic. We are trying to lead men to become Christians, not in a narrow sense, but in the large, rich meaning of that word which the teaching of Jesus gives it.

During the three years that we have in review there have been some such results. A goodly number have decided to begin the Christian life and have taken their places in the ranks of the followers of Jesus Christ. We are thankful that the army of the Lord has received so many new recruits. But there are many more who are not as yet willing to enlist. The number of those who are still outside the ranks is greater than of those who are marching under the banner of the visible Church. Much remains to be done in this direction. The work is far from being complete in this its most vital and important aspect. We have only made a beginning. It will not be finished until every person in all the wide parish is openly and positively arrayed on the side of Christ. At the present rate of progress it looks as if the Church had work laid out for it for a long time to come. It is not in danger of soon running out of material. There is a great work yet to be done in the way of bringing men into the kingdom of God. We hope to keep that always in view—to make it our central aim and our uppermost thought.

2. There needs to be created in the hearts of the people more respect for the Church, a better understanding of its mission, and a fuller appreciation of its work. Many people have mistaken ideas of the Church, and therefore fail to appreciate its work or its purpose. Some regard it simply as a venerable institution that has long had a place in human society. In former times it has done an important work, and still has its value. It is to be honored for its record and still encouraged in a mild and patronizing way. They would not banish the Church—they are not yet quite ready to undertake to conduct human society without it. They tolerate it and perhaps support it in a half-hearted way, but they do not regard it as absolutely essential or its work as vitally important. They do not understand the Church. The Church may be in some measure to blame for this. It has not always understood itself. Its conception of its own mission has been small, narrow, and inadequate, and it was inevitable that no truer or larger impression could be made upon the community. When the Church undertakes to do all for which it is responsible and prosecutes it with the vigor and earnestness that it deserves, the people will begin to understand it better and to appreciate more fully its mission.

Many people regard the Church as an institution to be supported. In common thought this institution, for some reason that may not always appear, has assumed the right to lay the community under tribute for support. Some accept this traditional idea without thinking much about it, while others are in revolt against it. One of the assistant pastors was calling at a house for the first time. The master of the house, when he was introduced, said, “Oh, another preacher! Well, I suppose they all have to be supported.” And he was not the first representative of the Church that has met with such an indignity.

Here again the Church may be at least partially to blame. It has too often regarded its office as that of preying upon the community as well as praying for it. It has not always been careful to give value received.