Add members contributing to the support of an organization to a probable minister and possibly to a building and you have the ground-plan of the average church in this Western country. What, then, is the church program? How are the churches attempting to serve their members, and just how much are they contributing through their program and activities to the life about them, toward bringing about a genuine Christianization of a community life? Religious values, it is true, are spiritual and cannot be tabulated in statistical tables. This fact is as fully recognized as the corollary that circumstances often limit ideals. What the churches are doing, however, ought to be a fair test of their underlying purpose. In a word, then, what do they consider their job and are they “putting it across”?
Opportunities for Worship
All the churches have services for the preaching of God’s word, but it has already become evident in the preceding pages that in certain sections of the Range country the Church, even as a social factor, is regarded rather as a curiosity by the men. An amusing story with a Bret Harte flavor is told of an early meeting in Beaverhead County. The hall in Glendale, a busy place then, with banks, restaurants, even a paper, was filled with a rough-and-ready audience of miners and cowboys listening to a lantern lecture. Vastly delighted over the trick, one man after another quietly rose from his seat and stepped out of the window. When the preacher ended his talk and the hall lighted up not a soul remained but himself. The next day, however, his audience made it right. They passed a hat and collected $300 for him.
As has been noted, more than half of the church buildings are adapted to preaching and nothing else, nineteen churches, of necessity, holding their meetings in school houses. The frequency of services varies. The larger centers have an abundance of church meetings. All but two of the town and two of the city churches have two preaching services each Sunday. But only three country and two village churches are so fortunate. Two additional churches, one a village and one a town church, have the advantage of two services a Sunday because they unite regularly with other churches near them, both of which hold two services a Sunday.
NOT A STORE BUT A CHURCH
Christian Church at Des Moines, Union County.
Forty-five of the seventy churches have less than two services a Sunday. Of thirty churches, twenty-five country and five village churches, each has less than four services a month. Those located in the larger well-churched centers have an ample number of services, while the majority of churches with less than two services a Sunday are country churches. Yet most of these are holding the only service in their community. Seventy-three and five-tenths per cent. of all the country churches have less than four services each month, and 44 per cent. have only one service or even less. All but one of the eighteen churches with only one service or less per month are country churches. Ten churches hold special musical services. Mid-week prayer meetings are held by sixteen of those which have two services each Sunday, but by only one of the forty-five churches in the group holding the fewer number of services.
Except in winter, the chief handicap to attendance in Beaverhead and Sheridan lies in the rugged landscape. Country members in all the counties have real difficulty in getting to church throughout the year. Most of them have long distances to go, and the roads make travel difficult in winter and early spring. In summer, haying is carried on very generally seven days of the week, and church attendance is a problem even if the church service is held at night. The aggregate monthly attendance is 18,337 and as the total number of services is 286, the average attendance per service is about sixty-five persons, low enough, but higher than the average active membership per church, which is about fifty-six. Average seating capacity, active membership and attendance compare as follows:
